"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun."

Hey, NRA! Someone's not hearing the playbook! Seems the Dallas police have their own preferred game plan when facing a mass shooter, and ain't all that concerned with your grade school motto du jour. Instead of waiting for Wayne Robert LaPierre, Jr. to show and save the day, they simply sent in a robot with a bomb. What a perfectly good waste (of a dumb ass slogan)!!!

What Double Standard?

It's as clear as- Black and... White!

What To Say...

I'm not for the taking of any innocent life; I do not support terrorism, revenge killings or any form of brutal hate attacks. But this killing of unarmed African-Americans and people of color has gone unanswered and ignored for far too long in this country. It hasn't mattered if those "in question" were: armed or unarmed, compliant or obstinate, male or female, healthy or infirm, minor or adult, felon or upstanding citizen- if you're Black or of color, guilt is assumed; your death, a simple statistic on another night's shift... 

When the police actively target you, the law fails to protect you, and the economy sees you primarily as fodder for their prison industrial complex- why should anyone be surprised that the other side finally countered with some senseless killing of their own?

In Memoriam

Photo: © S. Banos

On a spectacularly beautiful Sunday afternoon, came upon one very apropos memorial for The Orlando Massacre where every name of those so needlessly killed (by someone who sought to kill that part of him he could not accept by killing those who had) was read aloud and commemorated at Mission Dolores Park in San Francisco on 6/19.

GUNS & USA FOREVER!!!!

Toddlers Kill More People Than Terrorists in US

  

Think that bears repetition- Toddlers Kill More People Than Terrorists in the US.

And just in case ya don't believe it...

New Year, Same Story...

Where common sense continues to be an outlier,  and hope (small h), remains the dream...

Remembering The Fall Of Rome (And It's Batshit Crazy Leaders)

As a kid I always wondered how mighty, kick ass Rome pretty much allowed itself to fall apart and rot from within as the barbarians trolled the gates. Of course, once you start reading just how insane its Caesars really were, you soon start asking yourself- just how was it that Rome managed to survive as long as it did?

Of course, our modern, interconnected world experiences everything at a considerably accelerated rate. And I have been amazed at what this country has been able to endure just in my lifetime, including a President who (while definitely not insane), at least kinda knew he was dumber than a rock in some round about, dry drunk kinda way- and didn't give a damn how many people lost their lives in his little macho military fantasies. Now we got someone running who not only doesn't have the slightest clue, but who actually thinks himself more intelligent than all human life combined. And even scarier, if such a scenario is even plausible (and it is)- there are people who actually think believe he is, while others simply revel in the fact that he'll forever be the ever lovin' dick that he truly is... (just like them- except w/o his $).

Civilizations in the final stages of decay are dominated by elites out of touch with reality.

          -Christopher Hedges
 

If We Only Had MORE Guns...

This Would Have Never Happened!!!

Just The Facts Ma'am

American (Non)Jurisprudence

Monday morning before work I was hit with a double dose of how monumentally insane our court system in these Semi-United States has become. One video lays out how utterly and completely fucked you are if you are poor (a lawyer will be provided for you- for say... 7 minutes); the other describes just how determined the judicial system can be to guarantee they kiss your ass into eternity- no matter what the evidence says...

Hubbard's Lament

There's a lot that Ms. Hubbard gets right here, a considerable amount she also disregards or glosses over. Of course, White folk will be cheering this on as righteous affirmation that everything they say and believe is absolutely true, case closed- while the facts, and the truth are so infinitely more nuanced. 

As an inner city teacher of adolescents who were officially classified as "Extremely Emotionally Disturbed & Socially Maladjusted," one quickly observed and realized (again- depending if one had both eyes open) that there was blame aplenty to go around on all sides: parents (or lack thereof), school teachers and administrators, clergy, police, and even the children themselves... yes, society as a whole from the President on down. Plenty of blame- and plenty of reasons. The latter are often shoved aside or conveniently ignored, the former usually short or one sided, and the solutions ranging from ineffective, to non existent.

You can't effectively address, confront or attempt to remedy this madness of spiraling crime and violence without effectively including all sides concerned. And so much of the insanity that occurs within the inner city is a direct result of what occurs (or doesn't occur) far outside it. First and foremost, if there are no jobs to be had in the hood, then you pretty much have to give people the credit for creating them- and you know where those self made jobs are going to be... cue in: drugs, guns and death. Also see: the never ending cycle of crime, incarceration and despair that doesn't just suck in individual lives, but entire generations. What use are good decent schools in the inner city (when they do exist) if there are no institutions of higher learning that are affordable; and ultimately, if there are no jobs or opportunities to be had for all that desperately need and want them- not just for the handful that somehow manage to succeed beyond every and all possible obstacles!

Yes, it's easy to blame individuals for lack of personal responsibility, and individuals certainly must take responsibility- but how can anyone be expected to succeed in a society that has given up on them and cast them aside, looking their way only when the situation inevitably arises to cast blame, and accusation... or as a possible source of personal revenue in one of the few growth industries left in the country- the prison industrial complex.

Education is not held in very high esteem by much of "minority" youth, often it's looked upon more as a sad joke than anything else, something for other people with lighter skin in another world where they don't have bullets buzzing by their heads. Those scant few grants and scholarships, and those far fetched possibilities cannot protect you from the violence all around you each and every day.

Cops are not concerned with societal cause and effect, they want to go home in one piece to their nice peaceful neighborhoods where some measure of hope and sanity can still be salvaged. They don't have any skin in the game other than their own, "Protect and Serve" starts and ends with them.

So yes, Peggy, it's a goddamn shame that little girl was killed by one of her own, and the idiot that died by the gun (like so many others, before and after in his circumstances) got what he gave; but you really should know that TV's talking heads wouldn't have covered her death anyway, and countless others just like her. They both died statistics, together in their separate world.

This madness is all consuming, it sucks the very life out of you even if you survive it. Every inner city is a little Iraq and Afghanistan where PTSD runs rampant at every age and every household. To succumb to a one sided blame game is both very human, and very understandable. Ultimately, it just continues to perpetuate and conceal the very madness it so inadequately seeks to address.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

A few observations on The Stanford Prison Experiment:

1) First, the age old truism of what can happen when ya give someone a uniform.

2) How closely the study environment resembled a real life prison- and how true to life the accompanying results mimicked real life prison culture (in just 6 days), from Attica to Abu Ghraib.

3) How big a dick Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo was at the time for allowing himself to become so personally involved in the study and not conducting the "experiment" as an actual scientific experiment, so that his research and conclusions would be beyond reproach.

4) How easy it is to create a Nazi (see #1)- although can't help but think had the study been done with some say... students from NYC (rather than the burbs of CA), the "prisoners" would have been considerably more rebellious- though with probably similar results, considerably faster.

Self Explanatory...

Operation Tomodachi

The Fukushima catastrophe changed the world. Nuclear reactors melted down on live television and twice as much radioactive material was released as during the Chernobyl accident in 1986. The disaster drove 150,000 people from their towns and villages, poisoned entire landscapes for centuries and killed hundreds of thousands of farm animals.

AFP/US Navy

There's an old Saturday Night skit in which a Black janitor (Garrett Morris) is ordered to get his mop and bucket and clean up... a radioactive spill at a nuclear power plant. It was one funny skit- it's also basically what  Navy Captain Thom Burke told his crew to do on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan when they entered the radioactive plume dispersed by the critically damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. Not so funny...

Many of those sailors lived and worked well within that radioactive plume for days, cleaning radioactive fallout without protective clothing, drinking contaminated water. Hundreds of them are now suffering from advanced cancers and "unexplained" debilitating diseases that the Navy says they cannot explain, and for which they take no responsibility and admit no accountability. Of the 500 sailors stricken ill, 247 are now attempting to sue Tepco (the Japanese power company that ran the plant in question), they're legally prohibited from suing the US Military itself due to the Feres Doctrine).

 

 How much of this have you heard or read about on the news???

'71

One of the best "war is hell" flicks ever- and in my All Time Top 20 Movies. All traces of war rhetoric sentimentality are left at the Hollywood door; no right and wrong, no justice, truth or grand ideologies. Everyone gets turned into something they don't wanna be, save for those who already started as such. When everything around you is compromised, everyone on every side is expendable.

So we're left to deal with the uneasy realization that we create our own problems, and contrary to present day mythology- shooting our way out just prolongs and worsens them. Super heroes do not save the day, no miracle man vanquishes the evil doers with his magic gun. And we never do learn...

Everything You Know About Drugs Is Wrong...

Yeah, pretty much everything... from the way they affect our minds and bodies individually, to the way they affect society as a whole. We've created and perpetuated so many long standing myths about drugs, that we've come to believe them as basic truths. See how quickly they dissipate into disrepute when held to the light of the most basic of scrutiny...

Will straighten ya out right quick!

Man Of Valor, Man Of Honor!

Cartoon: Mike Luckovich

Being the modest, humble, utterly truthful, and self proclaimed hero, that he is- be it in the heart of the relentless Falklands War or the protest march under his hotel, don't forget this man has also shed his blood in our name in the battlefield called... The War on Christmas. While we routinely celebrated the holidays safe and oblivious, Bill has stood his ground and survived a bloody onslaught against all odds, single handedly fighting the good fight against every imaginary foe and attacker he can possibly hurl at himself, at home and abroad!

God Bless Him! There is no quit in this man!!!
(no shame or humility either- but, what the hey!)

Self Serve

Earl Sampson-  arrested over 40X at the same store for trespassing... the place where he happens to  work.

Yes, I know that policing is a difficult job, one of the most difficult- no doubt. But clearly there are those who think that while the vests they wear may protect them from bullets, the uniform itself provides impunity from consequence and responsibility.

Some people to this day still refuse to believe how badly a police force can behave (with a particular segment of society). Usually they'll chalk up such "baseless accusations" to hearsay, exaggeration, ("reverse") prejudice, or the tried and true standby- "It's just a few bad apples."  

This well documented example in Florida was not about a rogue cop, or a few of the aforementioned wanton fruits of decay- this was about an entire gang of thugs in police uniforms repeatedly breaking the law to advance their own careers. And just as this wasn't a case of a covert few who did what they willed with those they are meant "To Serve and Protect," you can bet this is but one of many uniformed, criminal enterprises operating in plain sight throughout the country...

Lords Of Secrecy

Why did 4X deferment Dick Cheney allow Pakistan's evacuation of key Al Qaeda operatives from US jurisdiction? And other outrageous and essentially unpublicized and unaccounted for acts of complete security insanity...