“Junk food attacks the body
from a base in a junk-filled mind.”
Dartwill Aquila
*
“Life will eventually bring down
the most powerful structures of steel
and arrogance.
But not our lives
and not in our time.”
Dartwill Aquila
*
*
Common Dreams is a daily web site with a broad following. Its stated mission: ”To ignite change for the common good” by providing ”news & views for the progressive community”. For the past six months it has functioned as a de facto PAC for Bernie Sanders. At least one and often several articles in praise of Bernie appears daily. Yesterday’s issue featured an article by the experienced and award winning nationally syndicated journalist Robert Koehler flying the lead title, ”This Is What Democracy Looks Like”. Under the title Koehler gives a a sketch of a Sanders rally in Chicago and stacks it with sound bites that he called highlights of Bernie’s speech.
Bob for Bernie Koehler proves that he doesn’t know what democracy looks like. I’ll explain below, but I must ask a few questions first.
What does invading a country based on lies, and killing millions look like?
What does killing 100s of children and 1000s of other innocents to take out ”suspects” look like?
What does police shooting unarmed people in the streets look like?
What does private prisons where inmates work as slaves look like?
What does giving billions of dollars yearly to Israel’s apartheid regime slowly exterminating their imprisoned Palestinians look like?
What does pressing ever more citizens into poverty and homelessness look like?
What does a government of bribe-saturated millionaires look like?
What does treating traumatized veterans with cocktails of drugs inducing thousands of suicides a year look like?
What does poisoning 100.000 people with toxic water so that very rich people can be given tax-breaks look like?
What does a medical industry causing medical treatment to be the third most common cause of death look like?
What does supplying the head-chopping Saudis with weapons, experts and logistics to slaughter the poor people of Yemen look like?
What …
You get the point without me extending the look-like questions a few pages. The questions can all be answer with various single words that don’t look, smell or taste like democracy.
So what does democracy look like? It looks like the will of the people, the majority at least, manifested in laws, policies and the development of the nation. I can assure Bob, Common Dreams and all the Bernies that the will of the people is not expressed in false promises and illusions about what their nation looks like.
Democracy is a three-stage operation; freedoms – process – decisions. Elections are a part of the process. They no more guarantee democratic decisions than cooking guarantees a tasty meal. When we know that the cooks are crooked, the pots rusty, the water polluted and the ingredients rotten, we shouldn’t be told to expect something delicious. Unless, of course, we don’t know what good food looks and tastes like. Unfortunately, in an obese, junk-food nation, all too few people do.
*
“If a man kills 10 people in a typical manner,
he is called a serial killer.
If a man kills 100s of children,
in a typical (drone-hellfire) manner,
he is called a president.”
Dartwill Aquila
*
*
No one notices Baglir as they walk by on the forest path.
The portrait sits on a tree trunk whose bark has fallen away.
It takes up less than 1% of 1% of 1% of what is left of the old tree.
We can toggle our perspective to see a profile and a full face.
Baglir, like all of us, has two sides.
The profile shows the nose above the eye
symbolizing arrogance.
A billion-big arrogance
lined with contempt blending with indifference
– for the poor, the weak, the sick, the old
and the different.
This is summerized by the empty spot in the head,
the home of Baglir’s psychopathy
which grows from his one concern,
MONEY.
It’s a one color painting. One concern,
MONEY.
He’s so full of it, so formed of it, so possessed by it
it fills his spine
and runs from the base of his brain.
The full face view shows a crooked smile
attempting to be friendly
but giving the appearance of an idiot.
The eye, the window into the empty spot,
the psychopathy, is revealing.
The portrait was painted by A. Byrd.
Those who only see art as an investment
will say it’s shit.
*
“The so-called smart money is destroying the conditions
for human survival. How smart is that?”
Dartwill Aquila
*
*
The Earthlings are strange creatures.
They dance to persuade the rain.
They pray to an invisible god to cure sickness
and win money.
They believe the position of stars 100s of light years away
can influence what happens here and now.
They vote for puppet-clowns in a political carnival
to change the politics of plutocrat rulers.
Strange creatures, indeed.
*
“He grows a world of nonsense in his little pot of brain.”
Dartwill Aquila
*
*
Veloonia hangs by a stem
wrapped in herself
speaks wide-eyed about the light
spreads the rumor
the wind is gone forever
pretends not to know
the light
dries the old and nourishes the young
the wind
makes dust of mountains and spreads seeds
the night
can’t be delayed
the morning
can be hurried
and the truth
is a point
where the stem meets the branch.
*
*
(Eyes/spots added to photo.)
An I-Zwan is an intellectual zwan. Many of these have glided thru our imagination with grace and dignity, producing interesting and informative works. A time comes when, pressured to fall in line with the media flock, they bury their heads in the flow of selected current events and talk thru their asses about the birdbrains trying to get elected as the new Cuckoo in Chief.
The poultry owners of Empire Corporation spare no expense fattening the flock. Once again we are promised a chicken in every pot. And once again we’ll get scarred and feathered.
Where have all the eagles gone?
*
“If they keep playing this sinner and saint trick
they’ll soon need Mother Teresa and Genghis Khan
to grab our attention.”
Dartwill Aquila
*
*
The US is trying to force India to abandon an extensive solar energy project because it “discriminates against U.S. exports.” India wants to use India-made products in India and this, according to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, breaks the spirit of international cooperation as stipulated by WHO.
Can you imagine what would happen if India tried to stop an American energy project because it discriminated against Indian exports? India would probably be visited by a large delegation of drones to hellfire negotiate with them.
The struggle between US and India’s energy project hasn’t been settled yet, but Mr.Froman states, “We are determined to stand up for U.S. workers and businesses”.
That statement nailed it. Step up and receive the gold medal in hypocrisy, Mike.
And tell us about all you have done for workers in the USA, besides making 100s of 1000s work for wages below survival minimum, or off-shoring and out-sourcing 100s of 1000s of jobs, or taking their money to give tax-breaks to the super rich, or dispossessing their homes, or cutting them off from medical services, or throwing them into private prisons, or making them obese with junk food, or …
*
“Where is Hypocrisy University that turns our so many excellent graduates?”
Dartwill Aquila
*
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Fearing the Pains But Not the Cause
”Donald Trump Scares Me” headlines Diane Ravitch’s article in Common Dreams (March 4, 2016). Diane is a historian of education at New York University and has authored several books. Despite her academic merits she, like most of her peers, proves to be ignorant of living in an empire.
Surely Diane has heard her leaders speak about America as an exceptional and indispensable country.
“The United States is exceptional, and will always be the one indispensable nation in world affairs.” Barack Obama
Diane has learned to pick a sentence apart, name the different components and describe their function, but she has not learned to see the easily recognized language of overlords. Her education hasn’t taught her to recognize steel-fisted superiority. An exceptional, indispensable nation, indeed! Do they have to brand a swastika on their foreheads for her to understand what they are talking about. Claiming that one nation is indispensable implies that all other nations are dispensable. The results of such arrogance coupled to massive military power can only be tallied in blood and destruction.
A lot has changed in the past 80 years. The exceptional nation concept of the American empire is the modern version of the Aryan nation concept of the Nazis, which was a modern version of ”manifest destiny” for American conquests during the 1800s, which ran parallel to ”the white man’s burden” of the British empire, which was the latest declaration of superiority by conquerors all the way back to the chosen Israelites annihilating the peoples of Canaan/Palestine 5000 years ago.
The leading players in an empire are symptoms of the system, as predictable as pains in the ass with colon cancer. The different rulers and their administrators differ only in the methods to promote the enterprise of conquest, which is what empires are all about. None of alternatives includes justice, peace or security for those they rule over.
Diane has every right to be scared, terrified even. But confining her terror to one or another of the bozos performing in the court of emperors qualifies her as spectator in the bozo league.
*
“Common criminals talk about their needs,
great criminals about their rights.”
Dartwill Aquila
*
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System Humanity 