@enhydra lutris
where the character has a chat room group that uses the FFFBs as their avatars. The character is "Norbert".

#5

and R. Crumb Comix.

be well and have a good one

@Pluto's Republic It was the same thing with North Korea as with Cuba. The forever embargo after the US attempt to unify the peninsula under its control failed.

It was the Korean War which resulted in the permanent war state in the US which was part of the US anti communist frenzy. Prior to this there was a demobilization after WWII.

There are currently 240 US and South Korean combat aircraft flying around the Korean peninsula on practice combat missions as an overt threat to North Korea. This is more than the number of fighter bombers in four US naval airwings (this is my way of understanding the numbers). Yet, US news media wonder why the North Koreans are firing off ballistic missiles in recent days (thus far other than ICBMs with one exception) in an asymmetric response and won't give up their nuclear weapons.

Earlier this year in the largest joint military exercises since 2017, in violation of the Singapore understanding, a US nuclear powered aircraft carrier entered the Korean littoral along with a US SSN. The current South Korean president Yoon is a right wing dictator who dodged the draft and now encourages the US provocations in show of stupid, incompetent and false bravado as compensation for domestic policies which offer nothing to the suffering Korean public. Yoon deliberately engages in provocative military actions in violation of the Singapore agreement (by Trump and Kim Jong-un) and the military agreements between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un to create military buffer zones along the DMZ and Northern Limit Lines which were intended to improve inter Korean relations and limit the risk of war.

Yoon's party name People's Power Party derives from a Japanese far right organization slogan. This organization dominates Japan's LDP leadership ranks. I wrote this just over two years ago:

The new name for the Mirae Tonghap Dang / United Future Party, the conservative opposition party in S.Korea, (called Mi Tong Dong for short), has been changed to People's Power Party ( 국민의힘당 / Gukminuihim Dang), which has a possible Japanese connotation. Mi Tong Dong had a double meaning of "with America Party." Several years ago the Japan Conference, a far right organization called Nippon Kaigi, had a slogan " people's power." Many of the politicians in LDP in Japan that control the party, and the government of Japan, are members of this organization. Shinzo Abe is a member. It is so wacky to think that the South Korean conservatives adopted these words from the Nippon Kaigi slogan as their new party name, labeling themselves as pro-Japanese, which of course they are. That isn't likely to get them any more votes. More likely they wished to be identified as a "people's party," which, as the representatives of the rich and powerful special interests, they definitely are not.

(Source- 뉴스반장 , 09.08)

Gook-min ui him dang could also be translated as Nationalist Power Party the same way Kuomin is understood in Kuomindang during the Chinese civil war. (edited for spelling, grammar and clarity)

#6

....I went down to SOHO to call on some documentary filmmakers I had met. They were unpacking luggage and equipment from a recent trip. They told me they had been in Cuba helping with the sugar cane harvest. "Were you filming down there," I asked? They said they were not because they didn't want to take a chance of having film confiscated coming back to the US. They said they had read a notice in The Voice that Cuba was asking for help and they joined with some other artists and headed down there. They seemed very energized by the experience, and very tan.

How do you get to Cuba, I asked? They said they crossed the border into Canada, and flew from there to Cuba. I thought how strange it was to inconvenience US travelers by closing the border to Cuba and issuing a travel ban. But as far as the US knew, my friends had only been to Canada. We were drinking Rum that night, smuggled across the Canadian border.

So, who was the US punishing here, I wondered? The Cuban Missile Crisis seemed like it happened a long time ago (even back then). What was the point of making it a hassle for people visiting to Cuba, and doing a good thing for humanity? This was way before 9/11. The Guantanamo nightmare had yet to occur. It seemed like the Soviet missiles were there one day, and gone the next. I then assumed that Cuba was being punished with sanctions for allowing Soviet Russia to plant nuclear missiles there, close to the US border. Years later, I concluded that Cuba was being punished for establishing a communist-style government in the US' backyard. In a more explicit response, the US embargoed Cubas production exports and Cuba's imports of critical goods. They hoped to damage Cuba's economy, causing the small country to fail spectacularly. In it's failed state, Cuba would then prove to the world that Communist governments always fail. But Cuba persisted.

Now, as I watch Russia facing the same situation with Ukraine, that the US faced with Cuba —the memories of my first brush with geopolitics in New York comes back to me. I wasn't as curious about dangerous diplomacy back then as I am now. Along the way, I embarked on a formal study of military strategies. I am familiar, now, with setting up misleading signals, provocations, and false flags. I can readily recognize strategic patterns and their variants because, frankly, there are only so many strategies and they repeat often. And finely, I can tell when there is something missing from a narrative; omissions appear to me like big gaping holes in the logic matrix.

Looking back on that Cuba moment, I realize that I didn't ask myself the right questions.

Have you ever wondered about the real reason that the Soviets brought those missiles to Cuba? Ever wonder what the Soviets got in exchange for removing them?

Just like in Ukraine today, nothing gets done until there is a negotiation and an exchange. Everything else is just bloodletting, opposition propaganda, and exploding ordinance to create demand for the single-payer weapons industry.

@lotlizard

as his self-portrait goes...

I never had the chance to meet him- I envy you that!

#10  
Later when I read about his death it was, like, oh, man, he was a cartoon bodhisattva but hadda split, coz the material plane was just too limiting for a spirit-soul so radiant.

Can that really have been fifty effin’ years ago?!

Then there’s my favorite Wonder Warthog story arcs: W.W. and the Pigs from Uranus…

Or the one where W.W. forms a formidable foursome along with Piltdown Pig, Paranoid Punkpig, and Pig o’ the Future…