Scales Open 12/22/15

There is confusion for Christmas in the land of the Science Men, because somebody had to go into a cave in China and come out with a 14,000-year-old leg bone belonging to a form of sorta-human, one that was supposed to have died out eons before, but obviously didn't, and so now the human evolutionary tree is completely all buggered up, again, and so the Science Men are drinking heavily, of the yuletide mead, and some have even commenced to Rend garments, and loudly Weep.

Meanwhile, a short-nosed sea snake, that was supposed to be extinct, it showed up off the coast of Australia. Not only that, there were two of them, and they were courting. Which means soon there will be more.

A yellow-bellied sea snake, which is not supposed to be extinct, but is supposed to confine itself to Mexico, unlawfully poured across the border this past weekend and slithered onto Huntington Beach, apparently for the "prime waves." In October one of these illegal aliens visited Oxnard. Prior to that, such a snake had not been seen in the States since the determined sea-beast that in 1972 launched an amphibious assault on San Clemente. That one was after Nixon.

And then The Hairball stunned the scientific community by presenting a Paper at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa that newly classified The Mad Bomber as "a snake." The Hairball did not reveal whether she be a water snake or a land snake, nor did he comment on any possible toxic properties she might possess. He did note that she is a reclusive, torpid reptile: "And then she goes away for five or six days, and you don't see her. She goes to sleep."

Prior to The Hairball's big reveal, I had always assumed The Mad Bomber was a lizard person, as that is what I had been told in the Tubes of Truth, over lo these many years. But, armed now with The Hairball's serpent wisdom, I dug deeper. And, there it was. Photographic proof.
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I next endeavored to learn whether The Hairball has himself been identified as a lizard person: and yes, indeed, he has.

Then, all became Clear. The Hairball had outed The Mad Bomber as a snake, because he did not want anyone to confuse her with the true lizard people, of which he is one.

The lizard-people Reality—of which there are 12 million adherents among the Americans—posits that the true 1% Overlords of all and every on this planet are shapeshifting reptilian beings beyond all time and space.

One version of this Reality goes like this:

The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, become active and develop an opinion. Our opinions will be shaped by the physical world around us; we will have been "conditioned" from our days in public education to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other "experts" are the primary voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.

The second veil: Ten percent of us will also pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.

The third veil: Ten percent of those who pierce the second veil, will eventually pierce the third veil to conclusively find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the entire world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.

The fourth veil: Ten percent will then pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry, and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.
osama-bin-laden-dead-or-alive.jpg
The fifth veil: Ten percent will progress to pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically that time travel and interstellar communications have no boundaries and controlling the very thoughts and even the very actions of people is what their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. As in the days of Noah, this technology is even creating synthetic life forms, as man seeks to displace God. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.

The sixth veil: Ten percent will progress to pierce the sixth veil where we learn the dragons and lizards and aliens we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real indeed and are in reality the actual controlling forces behind the secret societies uncovered in the fourth veil. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.

Furthermore:

[T]he harder a "sixth or better veiler" tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them. This truth is self-evident. Moreover, institutions such as the venerable "Southern Poverty Law Center" are formed and financed by the ruling elite to effectively label many such awakened individuals "hate-mongers" and "terrorists."

Glad I could clear that up.

Rudely they renewed the debate Saturday night as The Mad Bomber was still offstage. The y-chrome moderator proceeded to direct a question at the Cranky Brooklyn Deli Man while The Mad Bomber was still backstage somewhere. She had to hustle on out and say "I'm sorry," like a kid late for class. It was Mean, to make her do that. Even if she is a snake.

Newsnoses, because they must congenitally poke their probisci into everything, endeavored after the debate to discover just what she was doing back there.

Probably, in Reality, she was in some sort of snake-chamber, spasming through a shapeshift.

But the Story the newsnoses Fed us was that, The Mad Bomber, she was in the can.

Apparently, The Mad Bomber had stationed a minion outside the john to make sure no one but her went in there to emit bodily wastes. But the minion took pity on an O'Malley woman, Lis Smith, who was ballooned with caffeine. So, when The Mad Bomber came offstage buring the debate-break, she had to wait for Smith to complete streaming, before she herself entered the room.

The women’s room included multiple stalls, so it’s not entirely clear why Clinton and Smith couldn't both use the facilities. Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill declined to comment for the story, but said there wasn't a security reason preventing the former secretary of state from sharing a bathroom.

The key to this seeming mystery is simple, and so obvious. The Mad Bomber in the loo was going to huff up some meth. And she didn't want Smith to Hear.

Poor Martin O'Malley. It is like he doesn't even exist. Whenever anyone talks about the reptiles running for president as Democrats, they reference only The Mad Bomber, and the Cranky Brooklyn Deli Man. O'Malley, he is always missing. He is like The Invisible Man.

Saturday I was going to try to watch the debate, but immediately they started talking about the "data," and my eyes started to bleed again, so I had to lay down, and not look at it. I just listened. And some of what I heard from The Invisible Man sounded reasonable—even Sane. Finally, I girded my loins, and got up to look at the tube.

That was a mistake. For O'Malley might have sounded fine. But something had clearly gone wrong with his shapeshifting. For, with the eyes employed, he was quite obviously an alien being.
407fc937bc4c2c11613807ae248c1b6f.jpg
O'Malley, he is one of those people who looks best, when you're not looking at him.

I am so glad that, as the weekend withered and died, it became possible again to go into a tube without encountering some stupification regarding the "data."

Now we can get back to regarding the real Data.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBT7nUxJpC4]

Last week bells rang everywhere in joy, and ululations sounded without surcease, as "Iraq has chosen its first Miss Iraq for over four decades."

Eight contenders competed for the crown and the chance to represent Iraq at the global Miss Universe contest at an event moved to Basra from Baghdad following threats from conservative Muslims.

Twenty-year-old Shaymaa Abdelrahman, from Kirkuk, was chosen as the winner and said that the event showed Iraq was progressing.

"I'm very happy to see Iraq going forward," she said.

"This event was huge and put a smile on the faces of the Iraqis."

The women had to wear evening dresses that ended below the knee and prohibited from wearing headscarves. There was no swimsuit walk.

I don't think any further comment from me is necessary.

Meanwhile reptiles ripped the crown from Miss Puerto Rico after she went to her twit machine and there opined that "Muslims use our constitution to terrorize USA & plant gas stations."

Puerto Rico is a part of the United States that is not a part of the United States, because it is just gross, with all those brown people.

"I apologize to anyone who felt offended with my words," said the suspended and animated Miss Puerto Rico.

Who, thereby, with this classic non-apology apology, demonstrated that she has a bright and shining future, in mainland American politics.

For, I mean, "Muslims use our constitution to terrorize USA & plant gas stations"—that sounds like the sort of thing The Hairball blithely pounds out on his twit machine all day, every day, and in all of the nights.

So, for this lady, I think there should be: no woman, no cry. For though she may not be able to be Miss Puerto Rico. She, for sure, could maybe be the president.

Ashley Wilkes, though, he is not going to get to be the president. "This is not my time," he admitted Monday, after smoking a damn great load of opium, so he could go out and be Brave.

Wilkes was best known, during his brief and shiveringly embarrassing presidential campaign, for two things: (1) after serving 12 years as US senator from the neighboring state of South Carolina, in an August 2015 PPP poll he could summon "literally no supporters" in neighboring North Carolina. And, (2) a video in which he destroyed his cellphone, after The Hairball had broadcast its number, to all the world.

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

Ashley's time, as he knows better than anyone, truly arrived in 2008, when his soulmate John McCain was permitted by the lizard people to attain the GOP presidential nomination. McCain wanted then to embrace Ashley as his VP pick. But was prevented from doing so by the high-echelon reptilians in the Republican party. Who likewise vetoed Charlie Crist. And for the same reason: both men are gay. They also thumbed-down McCain's lust for Joe Lieberman as VP, on the ground Joe had eight years earlier been tabbed by Al Gore as VP as a Democrat. Which was even worse, to these (lizard) people, than being gay. So, McCain, in one of his legendary fits of temper, foamed and flecked in favor of the pick of Bill Kristol, a nebby meeko who lived and died to someday insert his quivering penis into the grasping chasm of the tundra termagant, Alaska Governor Meth Mouth. So, she be the one who be picked.

The really truly high reptiles, they shrugged and said to, and among, themselves, that they really didn't care. For they'd already decided the election would go to the Kenyan. If just for Kicks.

'Cause even when you're a 1% Overlord shapeshifter repitilian with powers beyond all time and space, even for you, kicks, they just keep gettin' harder, to find.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mknpz9tLiaA]

Ashley is the otherwise perfectly useless plantation son, unfit for the really important things—like riding to the hounds, or diddling cousins—but who can be depended upon to serve the Lost Cause there in the legislature, keeping the Yankees at bay.

Ashley, to be the president, he had a hallucination as to how he might prevail—but that's all it was, a hallucination.

I wrote to Ashley, and I told him that, now that the country all and everywhere is safe for gay wedding cakes, he should just come out as what he really is: an incredibly repressed gay man at last ready to burst out of the closet and wildly ride the seesaw. I pointed out that now, in USA 2015, you could, even down south there, ride your brother, rather than your sister, and yet if you still fondle your gun every five minutes, and never want to pay no tax, and yearn to hang all the wrong-colored people from the highest tree, and go to everywhere all over the dern world to bomb and bomb and bomb, and you be a 'Publican, you could fer sure be e-lected. Even as the president. He would be, like, I told him, a Pioneer. And I told him he should use this as his campaign song:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX2TH3Y7yoM]

I write these people. But they never write back. Can't figure it out.

The reptiles, they wrote some Numbers on a Paper. These, the Numbers, they meant some Monies could go here, or could go there. Some places the Monies could go everywhere; some places they could go nowhere. This is what is known as a "budget."

This most recent "budget," for the Americans, it is like all the budgets, all the way 'round the world. In that it says there can be plenty of monies for daddy—and also mommy: see The Mad Bomber—to bomb and bomb and bomb. But, so sorry, there is no money, so baby can have a new pair of shoes. 'Cause money, it's just too tight, to mention.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTgyh8slYH4]

Foam, it is flowing from many mouths, as a London play spinning off the Harry Potter canon casts a black woman as Hermione Granger.

Potter-creator J. K. Rowland says she doesn't give a shit.

Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione.

And, for a view from outside the white room, Stephen Bush writes that he always envisioned Hermione as black:

Of course Hermione Granger’s black.

Forget being surprised that Noma Dumezweni, who will play Granger in the forthcoming play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, is black—I still haven’t got over the fact that Emma Watson, who played Granger in the films, is white.

Granger—unlike Harry Potter himself, or Ron Weasley, his best friend and Granger’s love interest—is never given a skin colour in the books: she has brown eyes, frizzy hair and I, at least, always imagined her as black, partly because, when she wows her fellow pupils at the Yule Ball in Goblet of Fire, she straightens her hair, which was, almost without exception, how in my part of East London, everyone’s older sister prepared for a night out.

So I was horrified a year later when Watson—exceptionally white, no frizzy hair, and without Granger’s prominent teeth—was cast in the role. How could Hermione be white?

Hermione was near-universally perceived as white because all the world—at least for the present, though not for long—is a white room. With, but, sometimes, black curtains.

and i wait in this place
where the sun never shines
wait in this place
where the shadows run from themselves

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXFm_8Qbs8Y]

Poor white people.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT-SFgkVlno]

Very good piece by Chauncey DeVega on how there will never be any effective movement away from killing machines among the Americans until it is recognized that the white men grasp desperately their killing machines even as they experience increasingly flaccid peni.

The gun is central to the founding of an American society where hierarchies of race and gender were central to the country’s Herrenvolk white racial settler democratic project. America was born as, and remains, a culture and society dedicated to maintaining the dominance, privilege, and power of white men over people of color and women. This was not an accident, bug, or a glitch. It was a feature.

Guns helped White America to commit genocide against First Nations peoples and to steal land under the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. The gun maintained Southern society as a white over black racial military dictatorship. The gun was also a tool for white elites to control the working classes and poor.

At the moment of genesis for race in America, when "white people" and "whiteness" were born, the gun was a marker of racial identity and power.

There will be no effective gun control in the United States, even in the aftermath of horrific events such as Sandy Hook, the Planned Parenthood Shooting, or the San Bernardino massacre, until politicians, pundits, and analysts realize that the gun is a type of totem or fetish object for too many white men. As such, when we try to talk about gun control in America, a centuries-deep sense of white masculinity that understands the gun as its exclusive right is made to feel imperiled and upset.

It would appear that in the United States too many white men love guns more than their children, wives, each other, and–as indicated by suicide rates–even themselves.

But of course it is not just white people who have this disease. As any random American urban weekend headline can attest, Spike Lee was absolutely right when he said:

We as a people can't talk only about Black Lives Matter, I Can't Breathe, Don't Shoot, and then not talk about this self-inflicted genocide we're doing to ourselves. For me, it goes hand in hand. Only by talking about both and addressing both can we bring change. Cops ain't just killing us. We're killing ourselves, too.

I'm sorry—I know it's a drag—but you just have to stop killing each other. Hurting, too; but we'll start with the killing.

"I write along a single line: I never get off it. I said that you were never to kill anyone, and I meant it." That's what Kenneth Patchen said.

Natalie Portman felt a much milder echo of the same thing, in working as actress for Terrence Malick, right before embarking on her first project as director, and learning from her experience with him: "It reminded me that the rules of filmmaking are not necessary, and that the rituals we have are not necessary."

Absolutely goddam right. None of the rituals, that we have, are in any way "necessary."

None of it, is "necessary."

The whole lizard-person Reality: simply another sad projection, by and of and for humans, seeking to hurl upon Some Other Entity, the blame they themselves, should embrace.

How easy, it is, to affix upon lizard-people, or Overlords, or the 1%, or whatever it is, the fault for All That Is Wrong. Instead of shouldering it, yourself.

Like this unending execrable bullshit that we are supposed to pat the fevered brows of the serial killers who volunteered to kill for the US military. Like they are somehow the absolutely blameless victims of some uberpowerful brainwashing machine.

Bullshit. No. I am sorry. The last stars-and-striped American people who received my full sympathy were the last ones who were drafted, way back in 1973. You went into the US military—any military—voluntarily, since then? Then you knew exactly what you were signing up for. You were off to kill. And you knew it. And you wanted it.

Like the King, of all the Lizards, lizard-people and otherwise, he did, and to this day, doth say:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSUIQgEVDM4]

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mimi's picture

this means that 319 people in the United States can pierce through the sixth veil. Well, I wanna find those 319 people and kill 'em. If it were not for the holiday season, I don't do killing on those days.

Because I am confused about the meaning of Christmas, I was just going to post here my wishes to all who read and write here:

May your house comfort the honored guests of all tribes.
May your house and its guests be blessed with good health and good spirits.

I found these words appropriate to post. That's all I have. Thank You for the OT.
Give rose

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hecate's picture

December 21, was the 65th anniversary of the zig-zag appearing on Charlie Brown's shirt.

Mr. Brown, and other truly learned wisdom-wizards, set forth one of ten or twenty trillion possible meanings of Christmas, below.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVGJgJ5cReg]

One thing, for sure, is that Christmas, just as any other day, is never, anywhere, ever, about killing. Not in this, or any other, ever, or even possible, universe.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOCrBa8peCg]

Instead: dance. And let the wind, in that, take you, where it would will.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeGcAYgNKQ0]

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NCTim's picture

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

hecate's picture

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NCTim's picture

According to Tim. More so than Thanksgiving, the post harvest celebration. The food is fine, but Christmas usually means skunky scents of vegitative matter shared with mellow company, and the food. Last year, I prepared a standing rib roast with horseradish glaze. I will be deciding what to do, while standing the the grocery store aisle, this afternoon.

Have a Happy Holidays.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

hecate's picture

mimi's picture

things. Wow, I miss a family to cook for. I imagine to have to worry what to buy and cook. Those were the times. ...

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NCTim's picture

I had to skim read the first time through. I am stressing about everything that needs done. Car in the shop, need to hit the grocery store, house hold chores and taking care of Sweetie. Dreading five hours on the road 24th and again the 25th. Rumors of combustible attitude adjustment bring hope.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

hecate's picture

you, and for sweetie. A coupla hummingbirds.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfJI8WqfuyI]

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NCTim's picture

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

NCTim's picture

Down to 178# and can't pinch an inch. Anyone want to rassle?

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

NCTim's picture

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

hecate's picture

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sweden_0.jpg
Negative interest rates

Richard Landén from Helsingborg, southwest Sweden, tried to open a simple savings account at Swedbank. But the bank wanted him to move over his entire account, including his monthly salary deposits and any savings he had.

"You have to be an complete customer, they said. It's either that or nothing at all, apparently," Landén told Swedish Radio News.

Swedbank declined to comment on the case.

Sweden's central bank has cut its key interest rate, the repo rate, to -0.35 percent, meaning making a profit on savings alone has become nearly impossible.

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Time to hike interest rates?

U.S. home resales posted their sharpest drop in five years in November, a potential warning sign for the health of the U.S. economy although new regulations on paperwork for home purchases may have driven the decline.

The National Association of Realtors said on Tuesday existing home sales plunged 10.5 percent to an annual rate of 4.76 million units. That was the sharpest decline since July 2010. October's sales pace was revised slightly lower to 5.32 million units.

Interestingly, cash purchases of homes are still 32% of all sales and above historic averages while prices are still rising.

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hecate's picture

just get up and walk on out.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYYU1mJSeOs]

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hecate's picture

Kalle Anka, for short, has been airing without commercial interruption at the same time on Sweden's main public-television channel, TV1, on Christmas Eve (when Swedes traditionally celebrate the holiday) since 1959. The show consists of Jiminy Cricket presenting about a dozen Disney cartoons from the '30s, '40s, '50s, and '60s, only a couple of which have anything to do with Christmas. There are "Silly Symphonies" shorts and clips from films like Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and The Jungle Book. The special is pretty much the same every year, except for the live introduction by a host (who plays the role of Walt Disney from the original Walt Disney Presents series) and the annual addition of one new snippet from the latest Disney-produced movie, which TV1's parent network, SVT, is contractually obligated by Disney to air.

Kalle Anka is typically one of the three most popular television events of the year, with between 40 and 50 percent of the country tuning in to watch. In 2008, the show had its lowest ratings in more than 15 years but was still taken in by 36 percent of the viewing public, some 3,213,000 people. Lines of dialogue from the cartoons have entered common Swedish parlance. Stockholm's Nordic Museum has a display in honor of the show in an exhibit titled "Traditions."Each time the network has attempted to cancel or alter the show, public backlash has been swift and fierce.

Kalle Anka (pronounced kah-lay ahn-kah) gets its name from the star of the show's second animated short, a 1944 cartoon called "Clown of the Jungle," in which Donald Duck is tormented by a demented Aracuan Bird during a luckless ornithological expedition. The short is typical of the random violence of many early Disney cartoons. The sadistic Aracuan (regularly mistaken in Sweden for Hacke Hackspett, or Woody Woodpecker) sprays Kalle with seltzer, bashes his head in with a mallet, blows him up with an exploding cigar, threatens to kill himself simultaneously by hanging and gunshot, and ultimately drives the infuriated Kalle insane.

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hecate's picture

something weird

something weird

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c6HsiixFS8]

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Shahryar's picture

"Muslims use our constitution to terrorize USA & plant gas stations."

I guess I could read the thing and get some info but that would be too difficult and not as funny. Does she mean Muslims plant gas stations, like they would flowers and vegetables? Or does she mean Muslims terrorize Plant Gas stations? What is Plant Gas? Is it like methane?

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hecate's picture

what The Hairball's running mate was striving to express, was the notion that Mooslims control all the oil, and so they plant gas stations among the Americans, to suck up all the Americans' money, while meanwhile these very same Mooslims move among the Americans, with bombs and bombs and bombs.

"Plant gas," as you intimate, may indeed be a new and ever more horrifying Weapon of Terror, that the Mooslems even now are preparing to unleash.

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Somalia

Abdi Mohamud Abdi, a Muslim who was among the passengers in Monday's incident, told Reuters that more than 10 al Shabaab militants boarded the bus and ordered the Muslim passengers to split away from the Christians, but they refused.

"We even gave some non-Muslims our religious attire to wear in the bus so that they would not be identified easily. We stuck together tightly," he said.

"The militants threatened to shoot us but we still refused and protected our brothers and sisters. Finally they gave up and left but warned that they would be back," he said.

In previous attacks, al Shabaab has often killed both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Julius Otieno, the deputy county commissioner, confirmed the account, saying that the militants "were trying to identify who were Muslims and who were not," and that the Muslim passengers had refused to help.

The militants then fled the scene, both men said.

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hecate's picture

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enhydra lutris's picture

wonderful column by ou, but yet, somehow, recall none of it. Something wierd, methinks, or do I?

Fnord

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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 --

hecate's picture

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enhydra lutris's picture

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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 --

hecate's picture

they can trick you.

There in the foggy dew.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRvSdUh3wCE]

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link

In 1967, Merton published an essay on “War and the Crisis of Language”, in which he develops a distinctly Orwellian polemic against the corruption of writing itself by certain aspects of modernity. The speech of military strategists and of politicians is characterised by a narcissistic finality. There can be no real reply to the careful and reasonable calculation of the balance of mass killing in a nuclear war, because everything is so organised that you are persuaded not to notice what it is you are talking about. And when that happens, you cannot intelligently converse or argue: all there is is the definitive language imposed by those who have power. It is a natural extension of the language habitually used to describe the processes of other kinds of war. Merton relished the comment of an American commander in Vietnam: “In order to save the village, it became necessary to destroy it”, and memorably summed up the philosophy of many supporters of the Vietnam intervention:

“The Asian whose future we are about to decide is either a bad guy or a good guy. If he is a bad guy, he obviously has to be killed. If he is a good guy, he is on our side and he ought to be ready to die for freedom. We will provide an opportunity for him to do so: we will kill him to prevent him falling under the tyranny of a demonic enemy.”

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hecate's picture

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Iraq/Syria LEGO playset

The set retails for three trillion dollars, though the price may have doubled by the time this is published. Included in the standard set are enough LEGOS to build replicas of Mosul and Fallujah, allowing a child to refight those battles over and over. Figures include Sunni militias, Islamic State fighters, Shia militias, one figure representing the actual Iraqi Army, American special forces with and without boots, Iranians, Kurds, Turks, Russians, Syrians (moderate and radical, though they cannot be told apart), British, French and Italian troops, shady Saudi financiers and Hezbollah soldiers.

The basic set also includes a starter pack of refugee figures, though most people will want to opt for the bonus pack, if only to get access to the limited edition dead children refugee figures.

Not included: any weapons of mass destruction.

While the Iraq-Syria LEGO Playset will provide any child with decades of fun, even more adventures can be played out by buying the Turkish Expansion Pack.

And parents, please note: Even after careful construction with the best of intention, the playset tends to simply fall apart.

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hecate's picture

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