Columbia One

If Harris wins, it is at best a draw unless the democrites also win the house and the senate.  Assuming they do, there are a list of things they have to do or it was all in vain.

0. End the filibuster.

1. Add term limits to all federal judges and the supreme court.

2. Correct the imbalance of the supreme court.  Contrary to what you have been told, it doesnt matter how.

3. Pass reproductive right legislation.  Let the right wing nuts appeal it to the supreme court.

4. Pass legislation that makes it impossible for Murdock, Musk, Bezos etc to own important media all by themselves.  Make it so that the people own the media.

5. Prosecute Donald Trump for *all* his crimes.

6. Enforce the 14th amendment.  See to it that election deniers are not in a position of power.  

Nothing less than all of these is acceptable. 

Since these wont happen, it is time to accept that we need a second american revolution.  

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Its fun to see people's negative reaction to these images.... either because they are AI generated or because they hate America or because they hate people like me who are emotional.  It isnt clear.

Still Time to Prepare REDACTED for Revolution

 draft

 

I realize you are too important to have a conversation with me, but I still think it is a mistake that you are not arming REDACTED for the coming revolution, even if I am uncertain what side you will be on. Better safe than sorry, I always say. A dozen or so anti armor weapons, some RPGs and of course a few SAMs as bought on the ever helpful darkweb. I could see you maintaining a covert communications channel based on the plumbing and infrastructure of underground NY, or maybe laser/microwave line of sight over the park to the East Side or perhaps over the river to NJ. A stockpile of a couple of hundred AR 15s and several 10s of thousands rounds of ammunition, whats the harm? Not to mention a first aid station. Lets not be stupid here, which ever side you are on, the indications of approaching violence are clear and present. I am ready to come by and help out! You only need to call!

 

Revolutionary Situation

draft

Many friends have noticed that I seem to be rather worked up about the current political situation.  Some have politely pointed out that this apparent anger is distasteful to them and that I seem to be over excited. But what I think is that they are not anywhere near angry enough and that they are living in a fools paradise.  They dont like that, who could blame them.

I am an easy target.  I should worry more about my life and lack thereof, and at my complete failure to have a career.   No doubt some of my anger comes from that.  So this is acknowledged up front.

I think that the 2000 election was stolen by the Republicans to put their right wing stoodge in power. I protested this in Washington, where were you?

I grew up with Watergate and the Voting Rights Act.  I thought we agreed that people of color were going to be allowed to vote and participate in our society.  But that did not happen.  I thought we had agreed that we would have free elections, and not counting votes in Florida or disenfranchising Native Americans or Hispanic Americans is not a free election.

Putting right wing nuts and rapists on the Supreme Court means that you no longer have a judiciary.  Who cares what the Supreme Court says when in no way can you respect it. Maybe you respect it.  I dont.

And yet my elected representative isnt sure about impeaching Donald Trump, who was not legally elected as far as I can tell.  

I think what you have here is a revolutionary situation.  I am surprised that there has not been more violence. I think people are in denial that the constitution failed and that there has been a right wing coup d'etat.  

At some point all these little things add up and then where are you?

I want to congratulate Russia for being completely successful at helping Americans lose faith in their institutions!  Good job guys!  Best of show! 

Proletarian Revolution for Kids

This is the Fate of All Traitors

Alan Dershowitz is a traitor. At a time when this country is on its knees, betrayed by the Republican Party and the piece-of-fucking-garbage Trump, it was Dershowitz who stood up and stabbed Mueller in the back.

One of several things will happen.

Perhaps Mueller will endure and bring down the Republicans and their traitorous president. In which case, Dershowitz will die, alone and despised.  Or perhaps the Republicans will establish the Fourth Reich, Dershowitz will realize that he has betrayed his country and commit suicide in despair.  That would be a happy ending, but not so happy for all those he had murdered.  Finally, if he doesnt have the guts to kill himself, the internal security forces will probably kill him anyway, as that is what they do, generally speaking, with fellow travellers that they can not trust.

But one way or another, when this country needed every man and woman to stand up for liberty, it was Dershowitz who worked to destroy the forces fighting for freedom.

Fuck you, Dershowitz.

Economic Terrorism and Tea Parties Past and Present

Choosing a label for something, whether a car, a novel or a political movement, is a tricky thing.   It requires inspiration to do well and sometimes it requires imagination and the ability to see the title from other points of view in order to judge how good or appropriate that title may be.   A Chevy Nova might become a humorously-labeled "No Go" in Hispanic countries.   A Tea Party might be a famous and colorful incident in a successful war of independence, or it might be an act of economic terrorism which hurts innocent people and leads to a war with vast disruption of many people's lives.

Lets look at the famous Boston Tea Party using modern terminology and a less overtly American-after-the-fact point of view.  There may be some irony in our right-wing fanatics choosing to call themselves the Tea Party, after all.

Here are a few basic statements about the Boston Tea Party which I think are quite defensible once you remove the blinders that says they were "patriots fighting against oppressors".   

1. The Boston Tea Party was a violent act of economic terrorism to attain extremist political goals.

Whoever did it, and we do not actually know who they were, deliberately broke onto three ships in the harbor and destroyed other people's property.   Where were they guards?   All ships are guarded in port.  Were they bribed ?  How many were injured?  How many might have been injured?

2. We do not know who these people were.

The Tea Party was executed by a group of anonymous fanatics who took the law into their own hands.   We know an awful lot about that period of America.  We know who spoke at a major meeting at Fanuil Hall when the terrorist act was committed, but we do not know who were in those outfits executing the criminal acts outside.  You may hear or read about the "Sons of Liberty" but that means very little in this case. Everyone called themselves the "Sons of Liberty" those days. In modern parlance, we would call it an "umbrella terrorist organization".  Who were they? What are their names? Who financed it? We do not know. 

There is speculation about who might have been involved.  I can tell you some very amusing theories which actually does implicate a radical (and famous) Freemasonry lodge. (2) Maybe John Adams knew, and maybe he didn't.  But so far as I know, all evidence is circumstantial.

3. The Boston Tea Party was a Failed "False Flag" Operation

These days you hear a lot of people throwing around intelligence community jargon as if they knew the first thing about it.  One of those terms is "false flag" which is where a country or organization mounts an operation but tries to make it look like someone else did it.  That is what the people, whoever they were, who did the Boston Tea Party tried to do.  They tried to make it look like an indian nation, the Mohawks, did the deed.  Of course no one believed them for a second.

So what we have here is a botched false flag operation executed by amateurs.

4. The terrorists clearly committed criminal acts.

One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Massachusetts had laws. They broke them. Yes, that might have been a reaction to some taxes which were "unfair", so what?   I think lots of taxes are unfair but I do not go around blowing up the California Franchise Tax Board (even if it is a tempting thought).  They committed these crimes to provoke a reaction from the central government and they got what they wanted. Property was destroyed.  People were hurt, if not that night, then in the days and nights to come. 

5. The Result was Anarchy and War.

The situation spun out of control and we had a full-scale war and revolution on our hands. Estimates are that 15 to 20 percent of the population of the colonies were loyalists (1) and left (or were forced to leave) for what became Canada.  Of course this is the war that the terrorists wanted to provoke with their acts.

So what I want to propose to you here is that the modern Tea Party may have unintentionally chosen a very appropriate name for their organization, naming it as they did after cowardly, extremist political radicals and incompetents who violated the law and caused a war.

Good choice, guys.


Wikipedia page on Loyalists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalist_(American_Revolution)

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1. I have heard different numbers for the percentage of the population of the 13 colonies who were loyalists, and for how many left or were forced to leave.   The 15 to 20 percent is on the low side, I think.

2. In NYC, the most important Freemason temple was refurbished and on the opening night gave a talk to the public inviting them to have a look and to hear about Freemasons in their own words.  This would have been mid-late 1990s.   The talk was very interesting and among things discussed the American Revolution because there is so much myth out there that the Revolution was sponsored and let by Freemasons.  Our speaker was quite dismissive for the most part.  Yes there were Freemasons in the Revolution, but there were many Freemasons on the British and Loyalist sides as well.  Yes, there are incidents where a Freemason was able to help a brother in distress, but there are also events where a Brother signalled distress and did not receive help.   But he said there was one intriguing story where it may have been that the Freemasons did have a genuine role in instigating the revolution, and the story is this.

Freemasonry is mostly a social and charitable organization, a so-called fraternal organization.  They meet once a week, each lodge in its own place and normally do such exciting things as plan a charitable event for a hospital, or work on initiating members, or discussing their obscure lore.  Each lodge has its own personality, and attracts its own types of members.   In the pre-revolutionary days there was a famous radical lodge outside Boston.   I forget where exactly he said it was, but apparently it is quite famous and they met in a pub, I think, and that pub is still there.   The lodges all kept books recording the minutes of their meetings and they have the log books for this lodge.   On the night of the Boston Tea Party, only 3 members of the lodge showed up.  They immediately called the meeting to order and dismissed it.   Nothing else.   The speculation is that the rest of the lodge (and maybe also those three members who showed up to formally hold the mini meeting), who were all radical citizens apparently in favor of opposing the British and in favor of separation from Britain, the speculation is that they were the people in costume and on the boats that night.  Apparently it would have been about the right number of people.   The evidence is not close to definitive, but at least it is an explanation of who they might have been, and if so, how they were organized and how they did such things as organize their costumes etc.

I consider this just an amusing story, submitted for your consideration.

The Mexican Suitcase

In 1979, the brother of a famous photographer wrote a note about his late brother's work on the occassion of that work being featured in the Venice Bienalle, arguably the world's most famous art show, held every two years in Venice, Italy.

He said

In 1940, before the advance of the German army, my brother gave to one of his friends a suitcase full of documents and negatives. En route to Marseilles, he entrusted the suitcase to a former Spanish Civil War soldier, who was to hide it in the cellar of a Latin-American consulate. The story ends here. The suitcase has never been found despite the searches undertaken. Of course a miracle is possible. Anyone who has information regarding the suitcase should contact me and will be blessed in advance.

Four years earlier, in 1975, a colleague of the photographer wrote the brother and explained that he had taken the negatives out of Paris in advance of the Germans and had entrusted it to a Chilean he had met in the street in Bordeaux who promised to take it to a Latin American consulate. Nothing more was ever heard. It was assumed that the photographs were lost forever and presumably destroyed.

But it turns out that somehow, no one knows how, the suitcase, unopened, ended up in the possession of a the Mexican ambassador to Vichy France in 1941, General Francisco Aguilar Gonzalez. General Gonzalez returned to Mexico with the suitcase in his possession and passed away 30 years later, in 1971, possibly without having ever opened it. The suitcase was in the possessions of a woman who was the aunt of a Mexican documentary filmmaker. He inherited the suitcase, opened it, and reviewed the negatives. He realized that they were of the Spanish Civil War and contacted a professor at Queens College who studied the history of the conflict. The professor realized whose photographs these were, and contacted the brother of the late photographer.

The brother was Cornell Capa, founder of the International Center for Photography, and these were the rumored missing negatives of his brother, Robert Capa, arguably the most famous photographer of war in the history of photography.

But Capa was unable to contact the filmmaker who had found the negative and they were never received. Finally in 2004 a special effort was made to locate the person who had inherited the negatives and in 2007,  at the age of 89, Cornell Capa finally received the contents of the suitcase his brother had packed in Paris when the Germans attacked in 1940.

The 126 rolls of black and white negative are still being scanned and the ICP will hold an exhibition for them when they are prepared.

The guy in the center is a journalist named Ernest Hemingway

We must all be grateful that Capa and his friends had used film, of course. Had they been digital, no doubt they would not have survived. The storage media would have completely disintegrated over 60 years, it would be like trying to read a 1,000 miles of punched paper tape.

The complete story of the history of the Mexican suitcase can be found at the following link, at the International Center of Photography website:  http://museum.icp.org/mexican_suitcase/

Magnum Photos, the famous international photography agency, has a discussion of Capa at

http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535353

Imaging Resource Article on the Suitcase:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/04/05/famed-photojournalist-robert-capa-and-the-mystery-of-his-mexican-suitcase