@randtntx do we exhibit the same old idiocy, but we exhibit the same old evil.

too many examples of opinions assertions that were promoted as undeniable fact and then used to cause great harm. We laugh at those ridiculous examples, but here we are, doing the very same thing. I am totally astonished, dumbstruck, aghast, stupefied, flabbergasted, stunned, and completely blown away with how our society has been behaving. It seems we are living in an era that has unfortunate similarities with the "Dark Ages".

Monty Python was so spot-on.

@The Aspie Corner https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

08 JUNE 2019
Physical Holdings of Gold and Silver and Commitments of Traders - A Word From Joe the Angry Hawaiian

This just in from the Big Island. The natives seem restless.

Joe the Angry Hawaiian
"Imagine if you will, in a few short years, that information on current events will only be available from a narrow band of sources sanctioned by the government/corporate media. And this Orwellian future will be embraced by the majority of people because it provides security, both ideological and emotional.

Any dissension, criticism, whistle-blowing, anti-exceptionalism coming from critical voices will be labeled extremist. And this has been embraced by the two monopoly political parties.

I just received a questionnaire from the Democrats posing the question, "What's the most important issue in the upcoming election?"

The very first multiple choice answer to pick from was - "Russian aggression and increasing global influence" Russia, a country with a small population and an economy that is a fraction of the US or Europe is our dire threat? Let's just ignore the expansion of NATO onto Russia's borders, or that the US State Dept. spent 5 billion dollar to change the politics of Ukraine.

Second most important issue asked on the questionnaire, "Protecting America from foreign cyber attacks" Let's ignore the fact that the NSA is spying on all Internet traffic, that the CIA has misinformation programs like, "Operation Mockingbird" and many other covert activities to influence perceptions domestically.

The third Democratic Party priority question is "China's increasing economic and military strength" China's state controlled mercantile success lies directly on the twin shoulders of the US Government and it's multi-national corporations. The US granted China, Most Favored Nation status in 1979, which gave it exposure to US markets with low tariffs. Almost immediately, corporations went to China and invested in factories because of the cheap Chinese labor while abandoning the US worker. And in May 2000 Bill Clinton backed a bipartisan effort to grant China permanent normal trade relations, effectively backing its bid to join the WTO.

We live in a country whereby the US Government has made it possible for corporations to pay little or no taxes, to be deregulated from government laws designed to protect the public, and allow corporate crimes to go unpunished while maintaining vast influence over the political system through campaign contributions and corporate ownership of the mass media.

This US Government/corporate partnership smells a lot like Fascism. Instead of Mussolini we have Trumpolini. And so our time's brand of corporatism has descended over the eroding infrastructure of America."

Joe the Angry Hawaiian

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xexWqCwvEy8]

Not that there's a hell of a lot of difference from where I'm standing. Either way, they're still part of the Capitalist Party USA.

@hecate

my ex is a witch. No one is burning her. She even has a witch business.

Your humble scribe is one as well.

I never paid much worry about the warnings about religious persecution that every Witch learns as part of her training. I figure that by any re-start of the Burning Times, I'll already be long dead owing to my political beliefs; i.e., as a casualty of the Revolution. For if they take religious freedom away from Americans as things now stand, we won't need to debate about how to start the Revolution and what forms it will appear in; it will start on its own and will be as bloody, nasty and messy as any revolution has ever been. After all, Napoleon and Marx were right: religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich, and it performs that function by acting as the opium of the people, the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. (Emphasis on the part of Marx's message that too many would rather forget, especially over at TOP.) You take today's pain levels, deprive the people of their last source of hope, and "Katie, bar the door!". Moreover, as I discussed with mhagle in my last Comment, "prosperity gospel" Protestant "Christianity", with its near complete lack of trans-tribal compassion, can't perform that function, try as it might. So fucking with most minority religions would be a bad idea indeed for the American Oligarchs; the last thing these want would be for the poor working-class people to not be able to take any more and pick up a gun or a brick or a stone.....

[video:https://youtu.be/j3YcZ233MIs]

n.b.: I harbor less than no desire for violent revolt. Like Jackson Browne (the author of the music I embedded above), I'm terrified of it. But anyone who doesn't think it can and will happen here needs to extract his head from his nether parts! "Be afraid. Be very afraid!"

ex is a witch. No one is burning her. She even has a witch business.

In other magicians, Bergoglio is out there telling the truth again:

Pope Francis on Sunday lamented what he called a "culture of insults" enabled by social media and warned against nationalism and other "exclusivist ideas."

"The more we use social media, the less social we are becoming."

"In today's world, lack of harmony has led to stark divisions," Francis said. "There are those who have too much and those who have nothing, those who want to live to a hundred and those who cannot even be born."

He warned of the temptation to cling to "our little group, to the things and people we like."

The pope said that "nowadays it is fashionable to hurl adjectives and, sadly, even insults" in what's tantamount to "a culture of insults." He recommended responding "to malice with goodness, to shouting with silence, to defeatism with encouragement."

He also warned against the Catholic church's neglecting its mission to spread joy, instead becoming an organization with propaganda as its mission.

Francis echoed a call a century ago by Pope Benedict XV, right after the devastation of World War I, for "an end to all forms of nationalism and ethnocentrism." He also cited a reminder by that same pope that "the church's universal mission requires setting aside exclusivist ideas of membership in one's own country and ethnic group."

"No one ought to remain closed in self-absorption."

Speaking of social media and bickering, maybe there could be a steel-cage death-match Dueling Realities show pitting Kim Dotcom, Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate, Caitlin Johnstone, and Michael Tracey, against Laura Poitras, Barrett Brown, Marcy Wheeler, Quinn Norton, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Naomi Colvin. A good time could be had by all.

@magiamma

“Some of my kin look just like trees now, and need something great to rouse them; and they speak only in whispers. But some of my trees are limb-lithe, and many can talk to me.”

Et al...

I am for trees. I am against those who are not for trees. That’s the bottom line, the end all and be all. So may the trees live and prosper and may all beings that support and are a part of their weaving be nurtured. So mode it be.

Have a good one...