A film I need to re-watch this year.

Vertigo - one of my favorites.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/30/vert-m30.html

Well look who the establishment is trying to silence?

Why Julian Assange of course - why?

It should be obvious - he and Wikileaks have been spot on, on just about ... everything they've published.

New word of the day - 'testilying'

Police lying is as old as policing itself, and like all culturally ingrained customs, it will not disappear without the sustained intervention of outside forces. That is especially true in law enforcement, an institution governed by its own insular codes of silence, conduct and reprisal for speaking out.

Context here - https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/lying-fundamental-part-american-police-culture

The price I pay for taking a day off ...

... is all the shit I have to deal with on Monday morning.

Yay me.

Decided to do a rare selfish thing.

I decided to take a day off.

"nonconsensual kissing is funny" when a woman does it to man.

So funny!

So cute!

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/19/shame-on-you-katy-perry/

This all reeks of the double standard that harms both men and women. In this case, the lack of consent for an intimate moment is being trivialized because it was a male on the receiving end. It is also supposedly funny, just like so many popular culture references to men “wanting” to be raped by “hot” women. Neither is good for men, who often struggle to report abuse and assault for fear of stigma. Nor is it good for women to reinforce the notion that unwanted sexual behavior is OK if they do it, or if the person is famous enough.

They're children. Not juveniles.

https://fair.org/home/copspeak-when-black-children-suddenly-become-juveniles/

Reporters likely believe they’re being Official and Serious when adopting Copspeak, but they ought to consider why these terms are used. Police, like the military, use language deliberately designed to dehumanize those with whom they interact, in order to obfuscate their guilt when they kill or injure. It’s an institutional lexicon developed over decades of public relations fine-tuning. There’s no objective reason why reporters ought to follow suit, unless they view themselves as extensions of the police.

Great life advice.

Hey look everyone! Narenda Modi sold out residence of India's biometrics to the CIA.

https://www.asia-pacificresearch.com/exclusivethe-government-of-india-hired-foreign-corporations-to-act-as-biometric-service-providers-role-of-cia-in-the-aadhaar-database-exposed-in-supreme-court/5627808

Well look who's using bots to amplifiy a poltical message and in turn silence debate.

A Hillary Clinton supporter evidently -

Convenient how the same group of bot users would re-tweet their tweet responses - to uh ... squelch political debate.

Another establishment media figure I won't trust.

https://youtu.be/IYSOmD5LyYs

Natasha Bertrand.

RIP Stephen Hawking.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/15/hawk-m15.html

His wisdom was both simple and poweful -

Hawking encouraged his reading public to search for rational answers and explanations for everything. “My goal is simple,” he said in 1985. “It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.” He told Der Spiegel in 1988, “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”

Quote of the day - 03-15-2018.

"Hillary Clinton lost the election because of Hillary Clinton."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/14/there-she-goes-again-clintons-blame-game-mumbai-edition/

Finally decided to do something to move my musical ideas forward.

Got a new multi-track recorder and drum machine on the way.

Hopefully this will improve my output.

What gets forgotten about the past ...

... often comes at the hands of those that seek to not have it remembered.

Case in point - the Koch Brothers.

https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/what-koch-brothers-want-students-learn-about-slavery

The reading also ignores how central slavery was to the economic growth of the United States, with phrases like “the number of slaves steadily grew through natural increase.” Natural? There was nothing natural about the expansion of slavery. Slavery expanded because it was profitable. The authors seek to divorce the expansion of slavery from the economic design of the capitalist cotton empire and from the horrific practice of breeding, which became a large source of revenue, especially for Virginia slaveholders.

What is most egregious is what the reading leaves out. Even today’s corporate textbooks will include a paragraph or two that attempt to provide the perspective of enslaved people. However, this reading concludes by arguing there was a steady “rise of freedom” after the Constitution because “the new nation was mostly bent on expanding liberty and equality.” The only way the Koch brothers’ Bill of Rights Institute can draw this conclusion is by completely ignoring the perspective of those whose land and labor were violently stolen by the wealthy U.S. elite.

Nice blue water

Courtesy Saltwater State Park

CIA Democrats?! You don't say!

Yikes!

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/08/dems-m08.html

Abigail Spanberger
Gina Ortiz Jones
Dan Ward
Jesse Colvin 
Jeffrey Beals
Patrick Ryan
Jonathan Ebel 
Shelly Chauncey
Omar Siddiqui 
Elissa Slotkin 
Dan McReady
Daniel Helmer
Alison Friedman
Richard Ojeda
Josh Butner
Dan Feehan
Andy Kim
Maura Sullivan
Jason Crow
Matthew Morgan

Well here's a company I'll never consider doing business with - GeekSquad.

Here's why -

https://shadowproof.com/2018/03/06/fbis-cozy-arrangement-geek-squad-employees-remains-shrouded-secrecy/

Have you ever wondered who makes money off of firearms?

https://news.littlesis.org/2018/03/01/gun-profiteers-whos-getting-rich-off-the-us-gun-crisis/

Surprise surprise -

1. The Gun Manufacturer CEOs
2. The Gun Retailer CEOs
3. The Banks
4. The Hedge Fund CEOs
5. The Money Managers   

Well this is interesting.

https://www.alternet.org/environment/judge-decide-if-raft-cancer-lawsuits-move-forward-against-monsanto

Judge to Decide If Raft of Cancer Lawsuits Move Forward Against Monsanto

Well this is good.

http://www.localnews8.com/news/national-world/south-korea-delegation-to-propose-pyongyangwashington-talks/711382852

North, South Korea to hold summit in April

Let's hope no one tries to derail it between now and then.

Another one of those days

Where I'm once again somewhere I don't want to be.

And doing things I don't want to do.

Interacting with people I'd rather avoid.

Right now - I have no choice.

Hillary Clinton stole the 2016 US Presidential Election from Bernie Sanders, and gave it to Donald Trump.

She and her failed campaign are the 'Russians'.

Surprise surprise - who's really funding the research into new medical drugs?

You mean it's not the large pharmaceutical companies?

Why no! It's the fucking American taxpayer.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/taxpayers-not-big-pharma-have-funded-research-behind-every-new-drug-2010

"Just how important is our publicly funded research to Big Pharma and Biotech? According to a new study by a small, partly industry-funded think tank called the Center for Integration of Science and Industry (CISI), it is existentially important. No NIH funds, no new drugs, no patents, no profits, no industry.

The CISI study, underwritten by the National Biomedical Research Foundation, mapped the relationship between NIH-funded research and every new drug approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2016. The authors found that each of the 210 medicines approved for market came out of research supported by the NIH. Of the $100 billion it spent nationally during this period, more than half of it—$64 billion—ended up helping the development of 84 first-in-class drugs."

The connection between the military, the NRA, and America's kids?

The Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program and the Civilian Marksmanship Program -

The CMP is a little-known congressionally mandated organization. It was set up in 1903. It’s the Civilian Marksmanship Program. After the Spanish-American War in 1898, military planners were shocked that American youth just couldn’t shoot as straight as they’d hoped. And so Congress instituted this program in order to teach children how to shoot.

And that program exists today. The Civilian Marksmanship Program regulates the JROTC marksmanship program. Oftentimes, when schools are having difficult times keeping their program afloat, the CMP will communicate with the NRA, and grants will be filled out, and the individual JROTC program will outfitted with guns and ammunition.

More here - https://fair.org/home/they-put-lethal-weapons-into-the-hands-of-13-year-olds/

This precisely why I never want armed forces to be allowed into public schools.

Here are your fake news purveyors

https://www.globalresearch.ca/russiagate-and-the-neo-mccarthyite-war-on-alternative-media-and-political-dissent/5630547

"There is a paranoia happening in the US political establishment, remarkably similar to the one experienced during the Cold War era. It doesn’t matter whether the Russia-Collusion story is true or not (let’s not forget the United States has itself meddled in countless foreign elections ever since the end of WWII, even in Russia in 1996), it matters more what this ongoing investigation and grotesque media-hype is doing to the American public – and by extension to the rest of the world. "

I call it another failed Democratic Party election strategy.

Guess people in Seattle want the NHL.

http://www.sportingnews.com/nhl/news/seattle-washington-nhl-season-tickets-arena-potential-franchise-expansion-news/1hy498rvoj6en1c05pajj5mkrc

Seattle smashes 10K goal for NHL season-ticket deposits in 12 minutes