Mr. Universe's Revolutionary Roundup
For those who weren't here last week, Mr. Universe is a character from the science fiction movie Serenity. It's from him that I get my name "Can't Stop the [Macedonian] Signal:"
Dystopianmovies.org describes him as
...the ‘Mr Wikileaks’ of the Serenity world. He maintains a secret base with his own intelligence station and transmitter from which he broadcasts his defiant messages of freedom, exposing the misdemeanours of the ruling Alliance regime.
I'm going to try to hit a few of the Internet luminaries I missed last week.
I'm really impressed with Niko House. He was a major Bernie organizer in 2016, who broke the story that there was infiltration of the Sanders campaign (including paid staff, I believe); he was also involved in the lawsuit against the DNC which claimed they had not allowed a fair competition in the 2016 primaries and thus had defrauded the public out of a fair election. His show is "Mi Casa Es Su Casa," or MCSC.
This next one is both sad and inspiring, somehow. Jon Stewart called out Steven Colbert on his show. It's sad because, like Keith Olbermann, and, I believe, Ryan Grim, Colbert used to be a genuine voice for the left. He was a voice for the center-left, not leftists like me, but he still engaged in genuine and helpful criticism of the right. All that has been long over, and apparently Colbert's current version of events cannot include a possible lab origin for the virus, and Stewart just won't color within those lines.
Krystal and Saagar's show Breaking Points had a piece on housing in America. Terrifying, not exactly new news, but an extremely important story.
Someone on Bloomberg news said that it would be great for us to be a nation of renters. Krystal and Saagar--the conservative, mind you--both took that apart. Personally, I'm getting pretty sick of the rich telling all of us "You'll own nothing and be happy."
"Overall, this will make the market more efficient! Rental housing is more liquid!"
Be very, very careful when anyone in a position of power starts talking about "efficiency." The waste they eliminate might be your life.
I would like it if we could pool resources and establish some kind of co-housing thing, but I think it would be very difficult.
I love Jamarl Thomas (enough to support him on Patreon). Here he discusses AOC's political strategies:
"Sublimating yourself into the party, giving over your support without any preconditions, is the fastest way for you to NOT get what you want, for you to NOT get the policies...that you want."
Kyle Kulinski describes what's wrong with the COVID bailouts extended to corporations:
He also goes into the exciting new police state repression of leftists, using Jan 6th as an excuse. I wonder if the liberals in the country are ever going to wake up to the fact that the authorities they respect are actually using terrorist attacks as an excuse for creating a more authoritarian nation.
"These are some of the definitions and standards in the new anti-domestic terrorism crackdown: racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, animal rights and environmental violent extremists, abortion-related violent extremists (both pro-life and pro-choice), anti-government and anti-authority extremists (including opposition to perceived economic, social or racial hierarchies, or perceived government overreach or illegitimacy)...anarchist violent extremists (who oppose all forms of capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions which are perceived as harmful to society)...they include people who have a problem with "a combination of personal grievances and beliefs with potential bias." So personal grievance crimes...now count as terrorism."
And yes, you do have to be in favor of some kind of capitalism and some kind of corporate globalization to NOT be an extremist.
Jordan Chariton and Status Coup continue to travel the country, talking to ordinary people about homelessness. This activist wants a national shelter system which deals with people individually, according to their needs, rather than a cookie-cutter homeless shelter system:
Hard Lens Media talks about insurance companies refusing to pay for ambulance rides to the emergency room, and the March for Medicare for All:
Abby Martin discusses the origins and development of the CIA on her show "Empire Files," with particular emphasis on the CIA's recent rebirth as a moral, "woke" organization.
"All that assassination and death squad stuff, well--that's all in the past."
Aaron Mate covers the Biden-Putin summit, and the new Cold War:
Lee Camp talks about the House supposedly voting down the AUMF:
And about Biden's speech at the G7:
This recipe looks yummy. I'd like to try it, living as I am in a far less carb-rich, sugary world than I used to:
https://downshiftology.com/recipes/paleo-chocolate-cake/?utm_source=push...
Comments
Thanks for more of Mr. Universe's RR
Here is something on our local radar...
https://preventnuclearwar.org
with this
https://www.peacedevelopmentfund.org
A local organizer has drafted a resolution being considered by the town council to ratify this
proposal:
Whereas nine nations collectively have approximately 14,000 nuclear weapons in their arsenals, most of which are far more destructive than those that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945;
Whereas the detonation of even a small number of these weapons could have catastrophic human and environmental consequences that could affect everyone on the planet;
Whereas the United States maintains several hundred nuclear missiles in underground silos on hair- trigger alert, capable of being launched within minutes after a presidential order, which greatly increases the risk of an accidental, mistaken or unauthorized launch;
Whereas the United States continues to reserve the right to use nuclear weapons first, which reduces the threshold for nuclear use and makes a nuclear war more likely;
Whereas the U.S. president has the sole and unchecked authority to order the use of nuclear weapons;
Whereas the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and recent racial justice uprisings have highlighted the need for greater investment in our healthcare system and our communities;
Whereas over the next 30 years, the United States plans to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion to replace its entire nuclear arsenal and the bombers, missiles and submarines that deliver them with more capable, more usable versions;
Whereas taxpayers spend over $2 million every hour of every day to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal;
Whereas a grassroots movement called “Back from the Brink: The Call to Prevent Nuclear War” has been endorsed by over 350 health, environmental, academic, peace, faith, and justice organizations and has resulted in resolutions approved by numerous municipalities, including the cities of Los Angeles, Baltimore, Salt Lake City, and Washington DC, as well as the states of California and Oregon;
Whereas the United States, as well as Britain, China, France and Russia, are obligated under the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to take concrete steps toward eliminating their nuclear arsenals;
Whereas in July 2017, 122 nations approved the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which entered into force on January 22, 2021, making it illegal under international law to develop, test, produce, manufacture, or otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;
Therefore, Little Compton calls on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by:
• actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals;
• renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first;
• ending the sole, unchecked authority of any president to launch a nuclear attack;
• taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; and
• cancelling the plan to replace its entire arsenal with enhanced weapons.
And be it further resolved that Little Compton calls on the United States to embrace the Treaty on the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons.
And be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution will be sent to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Senator Jack Reed, Representative David Cicilline, Representative James Langevin and President Joseph R. Biden.
I know we have been fighting this battle for 50 years, but have to give the kid credit for trying.
Cheers!
question everything
I am oddly cheered by this news.
Thank you so much, QMS, for posting it. We've lost so much ground on this one in the past ten years that the kid's effort is well worth doing. We can at least regain--maybe--the idea that nuclear war isn't simply one more tool in the foreign policy toolbox.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I am as well.
There are a surprisingly large number of young people (and some old ones who ought to know better, as well), who believe that nuclear weapons are just another hoax. They appear to honestly believe that all those mushroom clouds from before the 1963 ban were just primordial CGI, just like the moon landing and all those pictures claiming that the earth is a sphere.
Somebody, somewhere, is laughing their asses off about successfully having planted that idea in the heads of the suggestible. The "nuclear war is winnable" folks from the 1960s must be very envious of that effort...
Tom Lehrer had it right. Nuclear war is not winnable. Watching the past and current administrations rip up the treaties that at least tried to control proliferation, slowed continued expansion of the arsenals, and reduce some of the tensions (seemingly without any thought of consequences) absolutely disgusts me. I'm a child of the cold war, and as a downwinder I grew up with the consequences of the last of the testing and the mad rush to procure the massive arsenal we currently have.
How is it that we have grown so immune to violence that we are willing to so easily accept it in its ultimate form? The global war on Truth has got some serious downsides, lemme tellya...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I feel this too, very strongly.
Watching the past and current administrations rip up the treaties that at least tried to control proliferation, slowed continued expansion of the arsenals, and reduce some of the tensions (seemingly without any thought of consequences) absolutely disgusts me. I'm a child of the cold war, and as a downwinder I grew up with the consequences of the last of the testing and the mad rush to procure the massive arsenal we currently have.
For the first time in years, you've made me want to take up a petition, condemning, on behalf of all of us lucky enough to survive the Cold War, the return to its grimy and intolerable conditions.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
In other news
A reality bite on the human cost of the GWOT(tm).
Over 30,000 US Veterans of Post-9/11 Wars Have Killed Themselves Since 2001
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/21/over-30000-us-veterans-post...
From our local university...
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/Suicides
Give peace a chance.
question everything
We need a new hippie movement
After all, who are they going to blame for losing the war in Afghanistan and Iraq without hippies.
Good morning, cstms ~
Great OT - lots for me to go back and listen/read
This is the type of thing that is going to bring compassion and peace back to the world:
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31682318/carl-nassib-las-vegas-raide...
it has to start somewhere - this fellow is bringing openness to the nfl.
Enjoy the day!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Stewart is refocusing Covid pandemic as China's bad
He is using the technique of repetitive wording to create an reactive associate grouping of words not normally triggered by the other, like lab and China. More commonly seen in marketing and advertising to create an associative memory, when either word or is heard or read the mind automatically adds the other association. How many of Americans are reminded of Budweiser beer when seeing a Clydesdale horse or the reverse.
Stewart is not the only person using word association to for an emotional relationship to the words. (from the link recommended by CB yesterday) The audience is simply different.
Scientific research and investigation requires an unbiased mind to let the facts lead one to the truth.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
That's not how I took that piece.
But you may be right.
The problem with the idea that Stewart is creating a giant "Blame China" meme is that "Wuhan" doesn't just mean "China" anymore to Americans, and certainly "Wuhan...Lab" doesn't just mean "China" anymore. Too many people know that Fauci was involved in funding the "Wuhan....Lab," and moving his gain-of-function research there when it was made illegal to do it here. I hate to say that Rand Paul is good for anything, but at least his tussle with Fauci spread the information that Fauci and others in the U.S. are *at least* as responsible for any deadly lab leak as the Chinese are.
In fact, I think focusing on the lab leak hypothesis ultimately breaks down the binary which makes it possible for the BAD CHINA dogwhistleing to happen.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Agree. He actually blamed “science” run amok
Notice the bit about “curiosity killed the cat, scientists say let’s kill a thousand cats to find out why.”
He’s saying this kind of virus research is in that category of, “Wait, what? No!”
I didn’t get any impression he was pointing to China in particular.
Ahhh, connotation indices.
It is far easier to take a "positive" word and slip in negative connotations, than to take a "negative" word and somehow turn it positive. Language is like milk. Doesn't take much to spoil it, and it never gets better- especially these days.
Here's an example: Which would you rather have: a nice, thick, juicy steak; or a bloody segment of muscle tissue severed from the carcass of an immature, castrated bull?
All it takes is drawing the parallels, and letting the reader run with it. Propaganda works....
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
quite a round-up, ms signal.
i wonder if you might give me/us more of the cliffs notes for the jamarl thomas on AOC video.
RT.com had featured jon stewart's underwriting the lab leak theory. but then, i recall his 'March for Nothing' on washington. very successful, and only about the power he had over his fans, as far as i could make out.
i'm still stuck on the western empire's foreign policy over nukes and the 'potential' for the return to the JCPOA, with plenty of new caveats of course.
israel owns 60 or so, dunno about china, russia, india, and pakistan, but no, iran must never come close to 'having one' (not that they want one...so far, so the israeli IDF tried to take care of THAT! . hard for me to believe that israel hasn't given a few to saudi arabia (the good sunni muslims)...
the US is the sole nation that's ever used them, of course. #GoddamAmerica!
from dada-esque artist anthony freda:
Nuclear Autumn
“When Your Only Tool is a Hammer, everything looks like a Nail.”
I think Jamarl
has just finally reached his personal breaking point with the farcical "efforts" of the so-called progressives in Congress. He's basically saying:
1)First, it's really weird that Morning Joe is the show that calls the Squad on their passivity. (The way Joe put it was "When I was in Congress, we constantly pushed for what we wanted, and we never said it was enough. You all are being so silent.") Joe is a right-wing Republican, and so it's very odd to hear him saying "Why aren't you lefties fighting?" [CSTMS: But not as weird as AOC's laughter in response.]
2)Second, they aren't actually being "silent," they are actively discarding the policies they claimed to support (like $15/hr minimum wage, Medicare for All, etc.).
3)"You can't sink the COVID bill by making demands" is a farcical argument, and false on its face, because, as Jamarl says, "Then why can Manchin do it?"
4) AOC and the Squad took money from people while promising to fight for these policies (she continued to do so all through the pandemic and its horrid economic consequences), and then lets them fall out of bills without a word.
5)As a politician, one should accumulate leverage, and use it. They aren't. Especially since the policies they ran on could transform people's lives for the better.
6)Even if one can't win the current battle, one can emerge from it with said leverage, and use it to gain an advantage in negotiating on some other issue.
7)"Being quiet is not an applause line. Even if it's a joke, that's not a good joke. It undermines, it kills the idea of your base." Everybody, or almost everybody, left of Hillary Clinton has reached a place of near-despondency; many of them are entirely alienated from politics now. "Part of that has to do with the failures of Sanders, twice. And not just the failures of Sanders, the failure and the inability of the left to get their agenda accomplished despite the fact that the majority of the American public backs you on it!"
8)"You have a large contingent of human beings that are for progressive policies, that they believe the public also backs. And in no way were they able to articulate those policies into any law or fashion of any kind of candidate they could back. Yeah, it sours the political process...There are a lot of people who believe that it is impossible to get anything accomplished in the context of the Democratic Party. And there are people like you and the Squad...who say "We're going to BOARD THE SHIP! WE'RE GONNA BOARD THE SHIP, GONNA TAKE THE SHIP OVER, THEN WE'RE GONNA RIP OUT THE GUTS...then we're going to use the mechanics, the machinery to take over the world. How's that going?"
One of my few areas of disagreement with Jamarl--and it's a big one--is that he seems to think he's still in a traditional, if corrupt, republic, and that these politicians have independent choice. But what he IS doing here is connecting the behavior of the Squad with the vast alienation and despair across the progressive left. Which I distinguish from the liberals and the hard left (like me).
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
why, bless your pea-pickin'
heart, ms. signal. even bullet points! i've long been a detractor of the squad, most esp. AOC, a her votes rarely match her rhetoric (just one reason).
now i'll have to mull this over, but at first bush i sense that i disagree strongly:
unless you mean 'to be elected/re-elected, but pfffff to that. #ConJob
guess i'd be tempted to call myself a radical leftist, if pushed.
and this just came in on the popular resistance newsletter (my eyes arr too burned out to read it yet):
World’s Nuclear Arms on High Operational Alert — & Ready to Strike, By Thalif Deen, IPS news, today
and of course i'd forgotten the UK and N Korea:
anyhoo, back as i'm able; RL moves very slowly for me these days, dagnabbit. ; )
Great stuff, CSTS
Problems with politics today reduced to the essence.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Thanks! Have to give at least 1/2 the credit
to Jamarl, though.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Good morning CSTMS, thanks. Really nothing
to say or add, lots of catching up to do for the next week or two.
I will point out that of course the CIA is woke, because woke is a phony thing, and the CIA is and always has been all things phony.
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 --
Well said!
Are you back from your trip, or planning it? I can't remember (my memory has been shit for the last few weeks. Actually, it has since I got the second shot.)
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Got back yesterday evening. Just a quick up and back
with a couple of nights thrown in.
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 --
I'm sure they invented it to begin with
Somebody made a 2-hour documentary/podcast-type thing that I think says exactly that, but I haven't gotten around to watching it.
This is a little beyond my wheelhouse, but I've heard scutttlebutt conspiracy-rumors saying that hip-hop was originally pushed by the prison industry to glamorize crime and get more kids in prison; wouldn't put it past them. The desire to "sweet lemons" a culture of ignorance and want is consistent with what we've known for years about how the oligarchs want to turn the whole country into the South (the idea that people view hip-hop and country as political opposites astonishes me - it should be obvious that it's more or less the same culture of squalor and despair. When I was in high school, it was all basically the same crowd, and they all totally trusted Bush; I remember trying to tell a roomful of people, all white/Hispanic/mixtures thereof, that Bush deliberately targeted black voters in Florida for disenfranchisement in 2000 because everyone knows blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic, and they were like, "Nuh-uh, you don't know that! They might've voted for Bush!").
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
TYT sucks if --
you were someone who trusted TYT in the first instance. That wouldn't be me.
People try to smear Aaron Mate because Aaron Mate exposed all the nonsense about Russia to a significant audience. You care about Aaron Mate, then, if you care about Democrats being fooled by Rachel Maddow propaganda originating in CIA corridors under cover of plausible deniability. Just as a footnote: the same people who believed in anything Maddow said were the people who missed the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia's statement that he, personally, bankrolled 20% of Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential campaign, or maybe they're just the folks who can't be bothered with explanations of how thoroughly AIPAC has its tentacles into American politics, never mind what Mossad is doing here.
And the "how would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with elections directly of other countries" comment needs an explanation. Only if you really have no clue about what happens in the rest of the world are you the least bit interested in Joe Biden's comment as such. Again, that wouldn't be me.
In the last decade the Democratic Party cult spent seven years worshiping the ground upon which Barack Obama walked while Obama himself pushed the Grand Bargain and the Trans-Pacific Partnership and while the Democratic Party gave all branches of the Federal government, 12 governor's seats, and 900+ seats in state legislatures to the Republican Party. AOC's selective capitulations must be seen in this light, since my last sentence describes the most important political event of the 2010s. The reason electoral politics in America is dominated by two cults is because all of the major players have banked on preserving the cult ignorance of "target voters." Thus the primary responsibility of defeating Trump was repeatedly ascribed to "The Left" and not, you know, to the forces that actually defeated Trump. In short, we are supposed to believe that nice things are to come to us, but don't disturb the Democrats!
It appears that this time around the Nice Liberals with Big Egos are trying for a $6 trillion infrastructure bill. I have a personal stake in this passing -- if it does pass I would qualify for Medicare in December and not five and a half years from now. I think we can safely cheer them on while at the same time pointing out their lousy history and their tendency to appeal to pig-ignorant audiences with the full intention of PRESERVING said audiences' pig-ignorance.
As for the People's Party, I like what they're doing but why are they only seeking ballot access in six states?
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Mate does far more than debunk Russiagate.
His work on Syria and the OPCW scandal has been exemplary.
He recently testified to the UN on the falseness of the claims that Assad did the Douma chemical weapons attack.
So I care about him because he's a journalist he cares about the truth.
As such, of course he gets smeared by propagandists.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
You and I and Cisco know...
that the main reason the US continues to fight wars, either as a direct combatant unit or through proxies, is to keep the weapons-producing corporations bathed in money. The US government could easily cut deals with all of the various Mideast combatants (with the exception of the group whose deals need to be renegotiated -- Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia), and there would be peace throughout the region. But how would that benefit Raytheon? So it never happens.
This is always the story, whether the story has the flavor of Aaron Mate or John Pilger or whomever we're citing on any particular day. There really isn't any competing story with any shred of credibility. And there hasn't been a story to compete with this story for quite some time.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
You're right, of course,
though I'd say sending the CIA or some CIA-backed death squad to make a chemical attack on a bunch of civilians (including kids), just for the purpose of damaging the reputation of a leader you don't like, all because said leader might not let you put a pipeline through his country--is, as Bertie Wooster says, "getting a bit thick."
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
It did occur to me that perhaps
we could just cut those corporations an automatic check each fiscal year. That's essentially what we do, anyway; they don't need to justify the need by committing atrocities and arranging said atrocities into a false narrative that might justify military action. Since all they care about is the check, let's just cut them the check. No propaganda, and thus no atrocities needed. At this point, no American would even consider the possibility that Congress would refuse those corporations anything. The days when we used to debate "defense spending" are long gone.
Those people died so the CIA could make lots of people in the West believe something so that money would get funneled to the "defense" corporations; if the whole point is aiming a spending firehouse into the mouths of those particular corporate execs, why not cut out the propagandistic middle man?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
this fascist nation is on a path to hell.
meet the new boss, same or worse than the old boss.
US government ‘SEIZES’ website of Iran’s Press TV, two other media outlets
22 Jun, 2021, RT.com
iran is the canary in the coal mine.
wd's recent coverage at c99%.
They're preparing for open, hot, class war
They've lost all legitimacy, they've played all their benefit-of-the-doubt-cards, they've (in a bizarre inversion of Reagan's promises) thrown away all reasons for us to want them in our lives but forced themselves into us more than ever before (innuendo intended), they are an entire cast of MacBeths who got where they are through treason and whose path backwards is so bloody that there's no longer any reason for them not to keep going (can't remember the exact quote, been bugging me for years), and while you can still fool some of the people all of the time, they know all of this. It's cornered-rat time.
One good thing came out of last year's riots: Visible (and for many, tangible and unforgettable) proof that They Fought Them Over There as practice for fighting US OVER HERE.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
George Dubya Bush quote:
"A mind is a terrible thing to lose."
(No subject)