Semper Fi

Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye", was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. By the end of his career he had received 16 medals, five of which were for heroism. He is one of 19 people to twice receive the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.

He became widely known for his outspoken lectures against war profiteering, U.S. military adventurism, and what he viewed as nascent fascism in the United States.In 1935 he wrote the exposé War Is a Racket, a trenchant condemnation of the profit motive behind warfare. His views on the subject are summarized in the following passage:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." (read more)

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler

Eric Arthur Blair - 1984

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense, revolutionary opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism.

Considered perhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote fiction, polemical journalism, literary criticism and poetry. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949) and the satirical novella Animal Farm (1945). They have together sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author. His Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, together with his numerous essays on politics, literature, language and culture, are widely acclaimed.

Orwell's influence on contemporary culture, popular and political, continues. Several of his neologisms, along with the term Orwellian, now a byword for any draconian or manipulative social phenomenon or concept inimical to a free society, have entered the vernacular. (read more)

"Nineteen Eighty-Four"

bizarro world

ZEITGEIST

your reality

The Power of Nightmares: Politics of Fear

part 2

part 3

crazy

"You have to be crazy...

to live in an insane world.

eschew obfuscation

believe nothing...




of what you hear...




half of what you read.

The Wall

"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"

"Hubris"

Special Of The Week!

U.S Debt Clock

prej-u-dice

The Future Is Now

Some people think there is a future

some people think there is a past

they are wrong

there is no "past"

there is no "future"

there is only the eternal NOW!!!!!

The Custodian

I'm a custodian

I clean up dirt

It's a dirty world

somebody's got to do it

I'm cleaning up around here

Bert the Turtle

Circus Maximus

"The Society of the Spectacle"
by Guy Debord

The Society of the Spectacle is a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism. Before the term "globalization" was popularized, Debord was arguing about issues such as class alienation, cultural homogenization, and the mass media.

Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation: "All that was once directly lived has become mere representation." Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as "the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing." This condition, according to Debord, is the "historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life."

With the term spectacle, Debord defines the system that is a confluence of advanced capitalism, the mass media, and the types of governments who favor those phenomena. "... the spectacle, taken in the limited sense of "mass media" which are its most glaring superficial manifestation...". The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity. "The spectacle is not a collection of images," Debord writes. "rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images."

In his analysis of the spectacular society, Debord notes that quality of life is impoverished, with such lack of authenticity, human perceptions are affected, and there's also a degradation of knowledge, with the hindering of critical thought. Debord analyzes the use of knowledge to assuage reality: the spectacle obfuscates the past, imploding it with the future into an undifferentiated mass, a type of never ending present; in this way the spectacle prevents individuals from realizing that the society of spectacle is only a moment in history (time), one that can be overturned through revolution.

Debord's aim and proposal, is "to wake up the spectator who has been drugged by spectacular images, through radical action in the form of the construction of situations, situations that bring a revolutionary reordering of life, politics, and art". In the situationist view, situations are actively created moments characterized by "a sense of self-consciousness of existence within a particular environment or ambience".

Debord encouraged the use of détournement, "which involves using spectacular images and language to disrupt the flow of the spectacle."

When Debord says that, "All that was once directly lived has become mere representation," he is referring to central importance of the image in contemporary society. Images, Debord says, have supplanted genuine human interaction.

Thus, Debord’s fourth thesis is "The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images."

In a consumer society, social life is not about living but about having; the spectacle uses the image to convey what people need and must have. Consequently, social life moves further, leaving a state of "having" and proceeding into a state of "appearing;" namely the appearance of the image.

"In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false."

(read more)

Run Sarah Run

"So you people think

Washington is a zoo now?

Wait till I get there,

here comes the circus!

And wait till you see

who I'm bringing with me".

Kill Shot-Frame 313

It is clear to me that

the kill shot did not come

from the schoolbook depository






And this was just a coincidence?

Abandon All Hope

There is a supermassive black hole

at the center of nearly every galaxy...

...you haven't got a chance

Join The Crowd

Your world is confusing

and imploding around you

you want to do something

but you don't know what

I know you feel lost

join the crowd

Self medication

I’ve learned through experience that delusions, brought on by capricious mental activity, are best left ignored. Like passing clouds, there’s not one worth hanging on to. There’s a practice I learned called ‘grounding’ that I find valuable. It helps me disengage from delusional thinking by anchoring to something in my immediate surroundings. The goal is to bring myself out of the grips of a delusion, or an intrusive memory, by way of the senses. Anytime symptoms come on, whatever form they may take ..it’s a good time to practice this exercise. I start by looking at five things nearby and begin naming them ..being specific and detailed. For example, I see my dog and say: “ ..shaggy brown hair and wet nose ..” or “..black computer speakers with silver lettering” and so on. Next, I name five things I hear, like the humming of a fan or the whoosh of passing cars, and so forth. Then I name five things I feel by sense of touch, like the jeans against my legs; the soles of my feet on the ground, and so on. I concentrate on sensing things the way they actually are ..careful not to replace them with the way I think they should be. I repeat the whole process a couple of times ..earning extra points if I become so wrapped up in my senses that I lose count. The idea is to make delusions disperse and fade into the background like the meaningless noise that they are.