Planet A of the Humans

Donal

“I wanna decide who lives and who dies.” Crow T Robot

In the late 1980s, I took a very smart woman to Michael Moore’s film, Roger and Me, showing at a small theatre in NW Washington DC. As the lights came up, we found that Moore had been watching along with us. He was friendly and accessible, explaining that he wanted to see the audience’s reaction to different scenes. I’ve seen almost all of Moore’s subsequent films.

I recently watched Planet of the Humans, which has become controversial for its accusations that environmental groups and CleanTech businesses are promoting ‘green’ industries that promise a renewable future but actually exacerbate energy depletion and climate change. On Earth Day, the film was posted for free on youtube, and will be available for a month. Jeff Gibbs is credited as writer, director and producer, and Ozzie Zehner was a producer, while Moore’s…

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Symptoms

Donal

Almost four year ago, I wrote Clinton vs Trump, in which I considered both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to be very weak candidates for President in an open field. I wrote then, “After a spirited primary season, it comes down to an establishment neoliberal candidate and a populist moderate candidate, both of whom are widely disliked and distrusted outside of their loyal core.” Clinton carried the popular vote, but failed to win the electoral college, failing to inspire rural voters in supposedly “blue wall” states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Some pundits claim she hadn’t even campaigned in Wisconsin because she took it for granted.

Once again, Bernie Sanders ran an inspiring campaign but currently trails an uninspiring establishment neoliberal candidate, in this case his “good friend” Joe Biden. Sanders devotees are again stunned, again feel cheated (denial) and accuse Bernie of being too nice to rivals…

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Tennys Court

Donal

As a fan, I have been following the Australian Open (AO) tennis championships, which feature both women and men players. That seems to mean I’m old.

According to a 2016 study of sports leagues, the average age of the ATP’s television audience is 61, fourth highest of all major sports. The WTA fares better; its average viewer age was 55, and the age of its audience decreased between 2006 and 2016.

I actually prefer watching the WTA, but I’m still older than the demographic they want.

After some lean decades, the AO moved from the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club to Flinders Park (now called Melbourne Park)  and has blossomed into equal standing with Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open. Its main stadiums are named Rod Laver Arena, Hisense Arena and Margaret Court Arena.

In the weeks leading up to the AO, there was a lot of media chatter about…

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The Passing of a Playboy

Donal

I’ve been intrigued by the reactions to the death of Hugh Hefner – the founder of Playboy Magazine. Erotica goes back thousands of years on cave walls, in paintings, sketches, and later in woodcuts and engravings. Since the invention of halftone printing there have been magazines like PhotoBits, first published in 1898. Pinup girls like Bettie Page used to pose for such magazines, which were usually sold discreetly to adult men, who usually concealed them. Playboy was the first high-quality, mass market men’s magazine to feature nude pictorials, and the first of the type that many women and children ever saw on the shelves. My father concealed his Playboys, though not very well, but we had neighbors whose parents were less conscientious.

I subscribe to the self-described progressive outfit The Young Turks (TYT), who have one show called, “Old School.” During a recent broadcast founder Cenk Uygur announced Hefner’s…

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Bad Boys, Mean Girls and Normies

Donal

Despite not knowing what it was for, I joined Twitter a few months ago. I don’t tweet much, but I follow people I respect, and read a wider variety of articles. Aussie progressive gadfly Caitlin Johnstone tweeted that, except as concerns Russia, President Trump seems to be caving to the establishment agenda. I decided to circle back to John Robb at Global Guerillas, and in an article from a few days ago, The OODA loop of Trump’s Insurgency has been Smashed, he agreed. OODA means Observe, Orient, Decide, Act:

 … the real uniting goal of Trump’s insurgency was “opposition to a failed establishment.”

That goal held the insurgency that put him in office together, despite gaffes, scandals, leaks, etc that would have ended the political career of any other candidate.  It was also a goal that allowed the insurgency to continue after winning the election.  In most cases, once…

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Kord-Kutting & Kaepernick

Donal

A few days ago on Facebook, one of my brothers “liked” an article showing empty seats during the first week of NFL football. Why? Because he feels that people should stand for the national anthem instead of protesting like Colin Kaepernick and a growing number of players and fans. The article implied that attendance is down because people who think like him are angry, and boycotting the games.

Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King has also proposed a boycott of NFL football but for exactly the opposite reason. Like Hank Aaron and a lot of people, King believes that Kaepernick is getting blackballed by the NFL owners for taking a public stance against police killings of black people that in many cases presented no obvious threat. For example: Tamir Rice, a boy playing with a toy gun, John Crawford, a man holding an air rifle he had just picked up…

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Single Payer CA

I understand via twitter that the establishment Dems took this video down from the official site:

Can’t imagine why …

The Angry Blue Planet

Donal

My weekend morning ritual has been to watch reruns of Men Into Space (1959) at 7:30 AM on Comet TV. Although I was completely unaware of the show until a few years ago, I’m sure I would have loved it as a boy. Essentially the show presented space exploration as a serious military project with very little tolerance for any speculative elements and roughly zero dissenting social commentary. The technical aspects seemed real enough for the time, though the space suits are obviously not pressurized. The show revolved around Air Force Colonel Edward McCauley, who was Ward Cleaver in a uniform – an authoritarian, by-the-book officer that always turned out to be right about everything. When not traveling into space, the Colonel and his subordinate officers enjoyed cookouts with their wives and girlfriends, who were extraordinarily attractive despite wearing pointy bras and way too much makeup. On two occasions women…

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Dueling Conspiracy Theories

Donal

Something happened during the last election. Depending on what news outlets you follow, you probably believe either that candidate Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government, sabotaging the campaign of Hillary Clinton, or that the DNC ordered the assassination of Seth Rich. You may not believe either accusation, and frankly there is no solid proof that either is true. You probably don’t believe both to be true, which is unlikely but still possible, because your media outlets have been presenting these as either-or conspiracy theories.

Seth Rich worked for the Democratic National Committee as a Voter Expansion Data Director. Some people claim he secretly favored Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton.

On 10 July 2016, at about 4 AM, Rich was walking home from a bar in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, DC NW. (I lived in and around DC until 1990, and never heard of that neighborhood, but in…

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Made to be Ruled

Donal

Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.

The big news in the United States has been the firing of FBI Director James Comey by President Donald Trump. At first Trump attributed his dismissal to Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton, but no one (except maybe FiveThirtyEight.com) was buying that explanation. After a day or two of differing stories from various members of the White House staff, it became clear that Trump had consulted very few of them before the announcement. Even Steve Bannon found out via a news broadcast.

Soon it was revealed that Director Comey had recently requested more funding and resources for the FBI’s…

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