Let’s admit it: As kids, we used to design our own rocket ships.
The war on democracy
Since the Second World War, the United States has:
1) Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of them democratically elected.
2) Attempted to suppress a populist or national movement in 20 countries.
3) Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
4) Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
5) Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.In total, the United States has carried out one or more of these actions in 69 countries. In almost all cases, Britain has been a collaborator. The “enemy” changes in name - from communism to Islamism - but mostly it is the rise of democracy independent of western power, or a society occupying strategically useful territory and deemed expendable, like the Chagos Islands.
The sheer scale of suffering, let alone criminality, is little known in the west, despite the presence of the world’s most advanced communications, nominally freest journalism and most admired academy. That the most numerous victims of terrorism - western terrorism - are Muslims is unsayable, if it is known. That half a million Iraqi infants died in the 1990s as a result of the embargo imposed by Britain and America is of no interest. That extreme jihadism, which led to the 11 September 2001 attacks, was nurtured as a weapon of western policy (in “Operation Cyclone”) is known to specialists, but otherwise suppressed.
While popular culture in Britain and America immerses the Second World War in an ethical bath for the victors, the holocausts arising from Anglo-American dominance of resource-rich regions are consigned to oblivion. Under the Indonesian tyrant Suharto, anointed “our man” by Margaret Thatcher, more than a million people were slaughtered in what the CIA described as “the worst mass murder of the second half of the 20th century”. This estimate does not include the third of the population of East Timor who were starved or murdered with western connivance, British fighter-bombers and machine-guns.
These true stories are told in declassified files in the Public Record Office, yet represent an entire dimension of politics and the exercise of power excluded from public consideration. This has been achieved by a regime of uncoercive information control, from the evangelical mantra of advertising to soundbites on BBC news and now the ephemera of social media.
It is as if writers as watchdogs are extinct, or in thrall to a sociopathic zeitgeist, convinced they are too clever to be duped. Witness the stampede of sycophants eager to deify Christopher Hitchens, a war lover who longed to be allowed to justify the crimes of rapacious power. “For almost the first time in two centuries,” wrote Terry Eagleton, “there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life.” No Orwell warns that we do not need to live in a totalitarian society to be corrupted by totalitarianism. No Shelley speaks for the poor, no Blake proffers a vision, no Wilde reminds us that “disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue”. And grievously no Pinter rages at the war machine, as in “American Football”:
(Source: anticapitalist)
(Source: pushthemovement)
(by ghostpatrol)
“They hate you if you’re clever, but they despise a fool…”
(Source: fearandhope)
We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so. We never seem to acknowledge that we have been wrong in the past, and so might be wrong in the future. Instead, each generation writes off earlier errors as the result of bad thinking by less able minds - and then confidently embarks on fresh errors of its own.
Prey by Michael Crichton
(Source: pushthemovement)
You know it’s really an election when the door-knockers come out. Follow @OFA_NH for updates from tomorrow’s Granite State primary, Instagrammed and otherwise.
A vote for Obama is the same vote as for anybody else.
It’s all masturbatory.
Not only did you back out on your campaign promises, you have signed bills into law that completely violate the Bill of Rights, most specifically so far being the NDAA bill. Every Obama sycophant says he had no choice but to sign it into law, that beyond indefinite detention there was Republican-laced legislature that would have fucked a lot of people over. I am so fucking tired of that excuse. When Bush was in office, he signed bills into law because of Democrat fuckery, I heard that shit a million times.
The line is so blurred in America that it’s hard to see anything at all, but I want Democrats and Republicans to know that they are essentially the same. The only way to truly exhibit change is for us all to collectively realize this and abandon our faulty two-party system that are never different enough for it to ever even matter. Name one president in the last forty years that didn’t do something directly against their campaign platform? You won’t find one!The Bush presidency carried out an apocalyptic war for oil reserves and labeled it a fight against terrorism. That’s how delusional we are as a society. Our government wages a multi-trillion dollar war against an idea. If history shows us anything, it’s that resistance to an idea only spreads it further. When you blow up a nation to snuff out it’s terrorists, to snuff out the hatred against Western culture, it’s like pouring gasoline on a house fire. We are developing them on a daily basis. Even if this was only the operating motive, it planted a disgusting seed of prejudice in the American hive mind. There are millions upon millions of people who just can’t understand why these little middle eastern countries hate us so fervently. Are you fucking kidding me? Really?
I am going to vote for the same person I voted for in 2008, somebody that represents truth and empathy in American politics. I am going to vote for a candidate that supports exploration and development. I am going to vote for nobody, because that’s who represents me.
The government bails out banks and forecloses on homes. Fuck that noise.
It is a little funny, though, that the symbol for “Don’t come in here, we’re fucking!” has the face of a government that says, “Don’t come too close or we’ll fuck you!”
There is no such thing as the Obama presidency and there was no such thing as the Bush presidency. Those in control remain in control, those in poverty mostly remain in poverty.
So to those of you that are for wars and against food programs, fuck your barbaric idiocy. For those of you who don’t understand why these tiny countries despise us so much, just open your god damn eyes for a second.
If you don’t hear from me again, it’s because I’ve been indefinitely detained.
(Source: occupymica)
(Source: thinksquad)
(Source: shmokersauce)
(Source: the-nomad-soul)
Tinkerbell comes to Real Life…. Christopher Bucklow uses thousands of pinholes to make glowing silhouettes