Can You

"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" wonder Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Bob Bates, and Joe Dodge.

Conspiracy and Class Power

Dr. Michael Parenti from 30 years back.

Fresh as a daisy. . .

Mondo Coco

Here the sexiest cartoon character around talks to squirrels, becomes a tutor, an inspirational speaker and author, a reggae singer, an airplane pilot, a supermodel, a Japanese TV celebrity who becomes Prime Minister, and falls in love with a yeti in a mad episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Characters, April 2008.

Letter to Vlad

Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy Paul Craig Roberts has composed a letter to the President of Russia:

Dear President Putin,

Please permit me to offer an explanation of the threat that you and the entire world now face. Washington and the American foreign policy establishment hates your guts. They hate you because you restored Russia’s sovereignty and, thereby, put a powerful country in the way of American hegemony.  Remember the Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992):

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

You, President Putin and you alone, are responsible for the “re-emergence of a new rival sufficient to generate global power.” Therefore, you are an unpardonable constraint on American hegemony, and “our first objective” is to remove the constraint you place on American hegemony.

This neoconservative policy remains in place. No alternative has come forward. Recently, two Russian analysts at the hegemonic Atlantic Council suggested that Washington pursue a less hostile approach to Russia.  They were immediately denounced by the other 22 members of the council’s foreign policy experts. It could not be stated any clearer that Russia is in Washington’s way. Does the Kremlin lack people familiar with the English language?

Whoever is advising the Kremlin is an idiot. Every time the Kremlin replies to insults and false accusations from Washington, the Kremlin hands to the entire Western media -— a propaganda ministry the likes of which has never before existed on earth —- the opportunity to repeat the charge: “Today the Kremlin spokesman denied that Vladimir Putin is a killer.”

If I may offer my advice, President Putin, explain to Peskov and to Zakharov not to respond to accusations and insults. Ignore them. Say nothing. Stop trying to appeal to Washington and its NATO puppets. The fact that Russia believes facts are relevant is seen by the West as a sign of great weakness. Facts don’t matter in the West. Russiagate proved that for you.

Go about your business where you are welcomed and regarded as a potential protector against Washington, such as Iran. Form an explicit mutual defense pact with China. Not even criminally insane Washington will take on Russia and China. Add Iran and the Taliban. The best way to keep Islamic terrorism out of the Russian Federation is to befriend them and turn them against Washington. Beat Washington at its own game. And by all means, stop Israel and Washington from attacking Syrian territory. Until you show Russia’s power, you will not be taken seriously. The longer you are not taken seriously, the greater the likelihood that threats against Russia will mount until nuclear war arrives. Obviously, Russia is not taken seriously with American Democrat leaders describing the President of Russia as the “new Hitler” and “a killer.” No American president dared to speak of a Soviet leader, where there actually was justification for the charge, in such terms.  

I offer this advice not because I am pro-Russia and anti-America, but because I worked to achieve the goal of ending the Cold War and its threat of nuclear Armageddon. People can go on all they want about climate change and Covid, but nuclear war is an end times occurance.  

The American neoconservative intent to acquire world hegemony will bring nuclear war unless you turn Russia’s back to the decadent, corrupt, and dying West and protect with decisive force the interests of Russia and her friends.  Washington denies you friends in Europe.  Find them elsewhere.  The peace of the world is at stake.

The Real Killer

 

Some brain-dead vegetable by the name of Joe BiteMe has accused another country's leader of being a "soulless killer" -- this from the same vegetable who supported dozens of new death-penalty statues for victimless crimes, who supported the destruction of Panama, Iraq(I), Yugoslavia, Somalia, Iraq(II), Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Ukraine. Now, this other country's leader just happens to be the strongest force against world-wide U.S. neo con/neo lib wokeness, a leader who continues to be wildly popular in his own land -- and why not? Considering he saved his nation from the grip of Western finance vampires.

Holiday

I resisted for the longest time, long after it went off air; because I associated it with un-New York 1990s garbage such as "Friends" and "Sex and the City"; because of the public obnoxiousness of creator Larry David; and because the Elaine character reminded me too much of an obnoxious woman I worked with at Hearst Magazines.

Call me obnoxiously stupid. It is a beautiful, brilliant, human, and somewhat sad show -- endlessly rewatchable. "The Subway," from January 8, 1992, is as perfect (and necessary) as a Chekhov short story.

Even this New York now seems as vanished as the Hippodrome. . .

Resnais

The word "great" is thrown around in the world of movie directors the way condescending smirks are thrown around among a Cohn Bros© movie audience. One of those who was truly great was Alain Resnais. David Walsh with a brilliant and complex appreciation.

One of Resnais's many short masterpieces, Guernica (1950).

Resnais II

His stunning short on the birth of French plastics, Song of Styrene (1958).

Amen

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II.

Ethel Waters

And Vincente Minnelli in his first direction. . .

Jimmy Dore Has. . .

Lost His Mind!

 

The Anchor

 The beautiful Maria Zakharova tells us what's what.