BartBlog

     Both men did what they could to survive a life where the deck was audaciously stacked against them from birth.  Survival.  A hard taskmaster, the dominant overseer threatening Black men day and night for the past 400 years.

     And also on the corner of Flamingo Blvd. and Korvel Street, there is a stark gray utility pole near the spot where Tupac was ruthlessly gunned down.  And on this barren utility pole, standing dismally in the hot sun on some deserted street-corner barely three blocks away from the Las Vegas Strip itself, almost a quarter of a century after Shakur’s death, people are still writing touching epitaphs with black marker pens onto its stark gray paint.  “We love you 2Pac” and “Welcome to the Thug Mansion in the sky”.

     That’s just not right.

I totally hate it that 0.2% of us are dying of COVID — but frankly I’m kind of enjoying our current lock-down situation. Fewer cars on the streets. Amazingly blue skies. Getting lots of reading done while standing in grocery lines. Having TSA airport checkpoints all to myself.

Sure, there are some annoyances to being locked down. Who in their right mind wants to breathe in carbon monoxide and re-cycled snot all day from a face mask? Who in their right mind wants to see America’s small businesses go under by the thousands and our school children get strapped to computer monitors like cyborgs? But on the whole, this lock-down hasn’t bothered me all that much. Guilty secret? I even kind of like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgP_Au5RZVw

But while I’m just luke-warm about liking this lock-down, the Federal Reserve is really really loving it. And why not? Back in the pre-COVID days, if we can even remember that far back, our economy was silently tanking and the stock market was about to crash. Then along came the lock-down — and Boom! Suddenly the stock market started avoiding its immanent doom.

Why?

Because the Fed has just saved its arse by printing up more imaginary funny-money than we can even imagine in order to buy up an incredible amount of falling stocks, even sleazy junk bonds that no one in their right mind would touch with a ten-foot pole (even while wearing a face mask). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anCPgDJSMLg

Now the Fed owns almost everything in America that isn’t nailed down.

But there are two other things about this lock-down that really do bother me a lot — aside from us now being owned lock, stock and barrel by the Federal Reserve of course. First, people are dying left and right from other lock-down-related stuff besides COVID. What kind of stuff? Suicide. Poverty. Scarcity. Violence. Debt like you wouldn’t believe. Despair. Serious non-viral medical needs. Homelessness.

COVID is just the tip of this lock-down iceberg disaster. And the many other dangers lurking below the water line of this iceberg are titanic. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200528-why-most-covid-19-deaths-wont-be-from-the-virus?ocid=ww.social.link.twitter

Second, I hate it that so much effort has been put into making us afraid, very afraid — even terrified. Get a grip, folks! If we get COVID, we either die or we don’t. Wash your freaking hands and avoid people who cough. Are you yourself coughing? Then freaking stay home.

And now all this constant fear-mongering about a “Second Wave”? COVID is not a giant tsunami. COVID is a freaking virus. Like the measles virus. People can only get measles once. Am I being naive here? Or is this just common sense? https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–vDf_4eiT–/c_fill,fl_progressive,g_center,h_900,q_80,w_1600/tl0ifkb82u2dxb1eaktf.jpg

PS: Two years from now, will Americans finally become really pissed off when they finally discover that COVID wasn’t all that dangerous? And then become even more pissed off that, dangerous virus or not, our economy has sunk like the Titanic and the Fed now owns our house, our car and our dog? That COVID was just another version of the Gulf of Tonkin con game, just one more version of Bush’s WMDs, just another “Make America Great Again” scam. What a con artist looks for in a scam victim

But why are we just sitting here right now like some gullible suckers and marks at a carnival sideshow, patiently waiting two whole freaking years before finally getting pissed off after the Fed has already robbed us blind — and we’re already in the doghouse?

PPS: Perhaps I’m gonna be adversely affected by this lock-down after all. In a bizarre turn of fate totally in keeping with Catch-22, it turns out that all that scuzzy industrial pollution that we hate so much is actually saving the human race from short-term extinction! Who knew.

Was the shading/dimming effect caused by all those scuzzy clouds of pollution actually keeping the sun from burning us humans up like cockroaches on a hot grill? According to Prof. Guy McPherson, pretty much yes.

“May 2020 was the hottest May on record…[and] loss of the aerosol masking effect due to COVID-19 lockdowns, could trigger a huge temperature rise…. The year 2020 looks set or close to become the hottest on record [which] points at a continuing rise reaching 3°C by 2026, i.e. likely driving humans into extinction.” https://opastonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/will-covid-19-trigger-extinction-of-all-life-on-earth-eesrr-20-.pdf

Holy sheep dookie! When you’re hot, you’re hot! And my refrigerator just broke down too. No ice cubes for me. And no ice cubes for any of us after 2026 either — unless we can figure out how to escape this new Catch-22 catastrophe ASAP. Perhaps the Fed should be spending its funny-money on figuring out that?

Boy did I have a wonderful time planting flowers in Berkeley’s miraculous People’s Park back in 1969 — until the National Guard arrived and stomped all over my geraniums.

And yet 50 years later there is still a People’s Park left in Berkeley today — even though we have to wear face masks and stand six feet apart if we want to go there to hug a tree. Yes, something of the old People’s Park ideal still lives on even now and even I, the most terrible gardener in the world these days, can still manage to get a few geraniums to bloom in my garden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGd6CdtOqEE

And now the Spirit of ’69 still lives on in Seattle as well — right down the street from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. https://www.corbettreport.com/gates/

In the exciting new Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), people there are also trying out a better way of life as well — not one involving under-the-skin microchips, 1984-style surveillance ops, weird untested vaccines, tear gas, tanks and eugenics.

CHAZ is all about local community-building, freedom, workers’ co-ops and Art for Art’s Sake. No guns, authoritarian diktats, stock market manipulations, phony “second wave” fear tactics or racism is involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMZUuIaK_Q0

Let’s see how long CHAZ will last — and let us hope that it, like Berkeley’s amazing People’s Park, will still be around in another 50 years too. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/us/seattle-autonomous-zone.html

Idealism is a good thing these days. Hope and kindness and cooperation and joy are good things too. Pleeze try to remember that, America. Law and order? Be careful what you wish for.

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Stop Wall Street and War Street (and Big Pharma) from destroying our world. And while you’re at it, please buy my books. https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM

Of course its lucky to be a Palestinian right now because they’ve been on lock-down for seventy-four years. They already know how to stay in their homes.

It’s also lucky to be a Palestinian right now because their healthcare system has been falling apart for such a long time that they are totally used to doctors and nurses dying around them, to having no available cures, to making do without medicine, to watching people they love die unnecessarily and to feeling so helpless and frustrated that so many of their elders are dying before their time. They are used to this empty hopeless feeling. Lucky for them. We’re just starting to feel empty and hopeless. They’ve been feeling this way for decades.

It’s lucky to be a Palestinian right now because they have been knowing since 1948 that “We’re all in this together,” that their small businesses are failing and there’s nothing they can do about it, that every detail of their lives is being supervised and spied on, that they have no constitutional rights any more and that their schools have been closed down.

Palestinians are also lucky right now because they already know how to survive under a totalitarian regime, to have tanks in their streets and exist in an atmosphere of fear and rebellion every single day of their lives, to get shot at and brutalized if they march in protest even a little bit. Even non-violently. Americans are just learning that today.

Palestinians are lucky right now because many of them only survive because they are forced to accept “charity” and petty handouts meant to either bribe or intimidate them into keeping their mouths shut and staying at home while a self-appointed elite 1% control their lives, write their laws and steal their stuff.

It’s lucky to be a Palestinian because their cruel Zionist occupiers have invented the choke-with-the-knee technique and have used it a lot on Palestinians already — so Palestinians at least know what to expect. And Zionists have been training a lot of American police forces on how to perform the knee-to-the-throat technique too — so, sadly, George Floyd was also ahead of the curve as well. https://ourneighborsinpalestine.org/files/PalestinianLivesMatterToo.mp4

It’s lucky to be a Palestinian right now because their money, their land and their future has already been stolen by Zionists so they’re already ahead of the curve on that one too. So when the COVID $camdemic leaves us Americans poorer than dirt, Palestinians can easily feel our pain — having been gone through this grim process already. https://unherd.com/2020/06/karl-friston-up-to-80-not-even-susceptible-to-covid-19/

It’s lucky to be a Palestinian right now because they are so used to being lied to that they can quickly recognize propaganda when they see it. Palestinians have been called “terrorists” when they tried to defend their families and lands. Palestinians know that they aren’t terrorists. So it doesn’t come as any surprise to them that we Americans are being constantly lied to as well. What does come as a surprise to them is how we Americans so willingly believe all this crap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMT3OgcghYg

But mostly Palestinians are lucky because they have been forced to become self-sufficient. They still know how to farm and grow things. They still depend on their local communities. They even know how to make their own shoes and sew their own clothes. They run their own schools. They are used to poverty being inflicted from above.

Palestinians are not happy about it but they can make to. They’ve got olive trees and back gardens and help from their neighbors. They’ve got a real sense of local community. They’ve had three-fourths of a century to get ready for lock-down.

Americans have had only a few months.

PS: If their internet connections go down, Palestinians just shrug and carry on. But if Americans’ internet connections go down, we are lost!

PPS: I just went to three of the many “Justice for George” protest marches recently. Thousands of millennials were there, Black, White and Brown. Thousands. And they, like the Palestinians, aren’t going to just sit on their [hands] and do nothing while they placidly watch their freedom, their money and their future stolen from them by some creepy elite 1% American oligarch bastards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6pzXrEBqR0&feature=youtu.be

We should be grateful to Palestinians for showing us the way to protect our own loved ones and communities from being sucked dry by the pirates who claim to legitimately run our country. And even more, we should be grateful to America’s brave Black communities right here at home for leading the way and reminding us that we don’t have to passively live with knees on our throats either.

__________________________________________

Stop Wall Street and War Street (and Big Pharma) from destroying our world. And while you’re at it, please buy my books. https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM

When I was a little kid, my really mean older sister was constantly telling me that I was stupid, dumb and ugly. By the age of five or six, I had clearly started to believe her. And to this day, I can still hear her voice in my head, “You are stupid, dumb and ugly. And lazy and will never amount to anything either, you’re a disgrace and nobody will ever love you.”

Finally I just threw a chair at her. She ducked. It made a big hole in the wall.

To a whole bunch of Americans today, Donald Trump represents that chair. He stoutly defends the honor of all those Americans out there who also believe that they too are stupid, dumb and ugly. So every time one of us progressives calls Trump a liar, a thief, a clown, a pervert, a dupe for the Dark Overlords, a tacky dresser, Sheldon Adelson’s rentboy or an idiot who doesn’t know shite from Shinola, we are in effect calling his base all those bad names too! https://theintercept.com/2020/05/23/coronavirus-evangelical-megachurch-trump/

And when Trump roars and fights back and blames everyone but himself for destroying the economy, selling out to the nabobs, spending our hard-earned money on even more dangerous nuclear weapons and brutal wars, trying to destroy our post offices, disrespecting Jesus’ teachings, throwing babies into cages, egging on gun-toting racist mobs, encouraging anarchy, screwing with our schools, screwing with our jobs, our families, our very life itself? And subjecting us to hours and hours and hours of bad TV as well? And so we call him an idiot just because he is one? https://abc7news.com/suicide-covid-19-coronavirus-rates-during-pandemic-death-by/6201962/

Then we are in effect insulting his base as well as Himself.

And when The Donald boisterously defends himself, he is also defending his base. And they love him for it. Trump is their Chair. And he loves being their Chair. Every time any of us with even half a grain of human decency makes fun of him, he tightens his grip on his base. Tightens his grip on their balls. Becomes their mean older sister. https://forge.medium.com/prepare-for-the-ultimate-gaslighting-6a8ce3f0a0e0

Perhaps it’s finally time for Trump’s base to realize that he is actually just using them, that he’s actually their own worst enemy — and then they, like me, will finally grab their own freaking chairs and throw their own chairs back at him.