I’m hoping to write up something about the shooting at the Stoneman Duglous High school but have not been able to finish it. But I’ll plod on and cover it next week. In the meantime I’ve been wondering how it is that the debates over guns has become a right and left issue.
Perhaps this is the biggest coup ever by the National Rifle Association to identify itself with the right side of the political spectrum. I’ve noticed that if someone writes something critical of the present gun laws some of the responses to him or her are that the person is a leftist. Many of these don’t stop there but call the person a “snowflake.” Now that’s a term I did not grow up with and appears of recent vintage. I wanted to find out its meaning and how it became associated with those who were unhappy with the present gun laws.
I went to the Merriam-Webster dictionary and learned the term as been applied to people in the early 1860s as those who were opposed to the abolition of slavery. In other words in today’s American patois we’d call those persons Pro-Slavery.
Then over 100 years later during the 1970s it was a derogatory term, according to the dictionary, “for white people or black people who were perceived as acting white.” That sort of threw me. I wondered “how can a white person be perceived as acting white?” You can figure that one out.
The dictionary also mentioned as I learned in my wiretapping days that part of the word, “snow”, referred to cocaine. it did not mention that it was commonly bought with “bread”. Nor did it mention why it decided to talk about the word snow in an article on snowflake. If it wanted to be consistent it would have told us about the slang meaning off the other part of the word “flake”. Now that’s something that has been around for a long while and needs little explanation.
Merriam-Webster did give us an updated version of the meaning of the word snowflake. It is “used to describe a person perceived as overly sensitive and fragile in a mocking way.” Now that I think of it isn’t the right-wing Boston Herald columnist one that often uses that term. His popularity didn’t save his paper from going under though.
I began to wonder how the NRA people started to think that those who want to changer the gun laws are somehow not manly. (Can I say manly anymore?) Perhaps I should strike that and say the NRA members believe those who are opposed to the present gun laws are not courageous or strong. But haven’t we learned the opposite is true.
Haven’t we seen that it is actually the weak and feeble who use guns. Those who have been with me a while know how Martorano and Whitey Bulger armed themselves to give them courage. They confronted people without guns who they would not have confronted in a mano-a-mano situation. They liked to shoot them from behind.
My experience is the toughest guys I knew never carried. They didn’t have to do this. They were aware that you don’t take fists to a gun fight but most encounters don’t require guns and they felt no need for them. (I exclude policemen who are required to carry because of their job and the loose gun laws that often put them up against guns. Of course one of the sad requirements that police officers carry guns is they sometimes in a moment of despair use them on themselves.)
I’m not saying people who kill others with guns are “overly sensitive” since they certainly aren’t that but are self-centered. But they are “fragile” because of their need for a gun to feel tough. Perhaps then if we correctly correlate factors we should understand that guns don’t equal tough people but perhaps the opposite. Where then on what side of the political spectrum are the snowflakes?
Just tap your Timberlands three times , dear . And remember , it really is a debunked and thoroughly discredited dream !
All Power To The Electric Slide !!!
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN ! L.Frank Baum
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz .
All power to the Diabetic!!!
wa-llahi! The ‘Don Juan in Hell’ dream sequence occurs in Shaw’s “Man and Superman.”
TOT
IEM
ULE
STO
Considering yesterday’s holiday, perhaps, we should discuss the Irish, and, Anglo-Irish, playwrights. Sean O’Casey’s would would be a fine place to start. We could work backwards to Yeats, and, Shaw. I’m, especially, fond of Yeats’ Ulster Cycle, although there’s, easily, as, much, to be appreciated in Shaw’s dream sequences (Don Juan in Hell).
Are there any Brendan Behan fans out there? Borstal Boy? He, also, wrote a stage play about an execution, “The Quare Fellow.” Drink took Behan much too young.
Abe: I was serious about discussing Irish History. No gall in that. While land tenure issues (Brehon Law vs English) in Medieval Ireland have always been my principal interest, I’m read in the development of Irish political identity. Present day nationalist politics, and, their relation to the historical past, make a wonderful starting place for discussion. What was your argument regarding the ’60’s civil rights movement in the Six Counties?
Hi Khalid. I didn’t have an argument. I just said the roots went further back than Martin Luther King. A lot further back.
I’m not qualified to discuss Irish politics beyond these borders. You see, I don’t use Google. That’s a big drawback these days. My contact over the years has been with Irish nationals and ex-pats in the Boston area. They were almost all from Dublin, so there you have it. That is my data base. Between that and watching “The Commitments” about a dozen times is all I got. “I’m Black and I’m proud.”
What did these luminaries have to do with Evacuation Day? They weren’t even born.
Capitalism celebrates what is, socialism shows what could be. The two notions interact, dialectically. Capitalism, “thesis,” is sublated by socialism, “antithesis.” The socially valuable elements of the sublated notion (capitalism) are incorporated into the resulting synthesis. The modern social histories of the Scandinavian nations illustrate this process. Bismarck’s social reform of the German State is another example.
History is always in motion. Human agency creates the future. Choice can’t be evaded. Loss of agency, death, creates the past (Sartre). There’s no going backwards. Capitalism informs only the necropolis.
Wa-llahi! You guys don’t dig Brecht? What a shame. There’s a lot to be gleaned from studying his work. Brecht added a didactic dimension to the traditional notion of drama, a teaching moment, so to speak. That moment accompanies the Nietzschean notion of emotional catharsis, producing, not, only, an affective release, but, an intellectual epiphany, as, well.
Brecht is best known for “Three Penny Opera.”
In a truly updated version of “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” the lead character, Arturo, should exchange gradually evolving orange wigs, rather, than, various mustaches, as the play progresses.
By the way, I’m really looking forward to Bill’s annotation of the above and the following posts. I’m not qualified, having a metaphysical valuation of my fellow man that does not have its source in the imperishable value of the human soul. And I’m in no way knocking you, Bill. I’m just more a sceptic on that subject.
Someone sent me this.
“Communism is man exploiting his fellow man; capitalism is the opposite.”
“THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE BOSTON, MASS
Prosecute the Crooked Federal Prosecutors”
A booklet coming to bookstores nationwide soon and also available at Amazon hopefully within a month . . . .TIME WILL TELL
I THINK MATT’S WORKING ON HIS NEW BOOK:
Here’s my Official Public Announcement of my soon to be published New Book ( A 30 page pamphlet, probably via XLIBRIS):
Ten years ago I put a flower inside a CD and found the wilted flower/CD just yesterday. The flower was given as a present out of the blue by a most lovely B.C. coed, as lovely as Alexa or Giovanna, and I kept it preserved inside that CD on a piece of paper with her name writen upon it. Her name? Amy K. Elliott, the same as Sam Elliott who’s DVD “Hero” I received in the mail just two hours later that same day. Ten years apart and two hours apart two Elliots come back into my life. Almost simultaneously, considering the DVD was FEDEXed dropped outside my front door . . .could have been dropped the exact same time I picked up Amy’s flower downstairs as I rummaged through old stuff, old collections of CDs, and so on and so forth.
Mere Coinicidence?
I think not. I hear a ping from the Cosmic Consciousness, the Great Unknown, the Magesterial Mysterian, the Holy Spirit that suffuses one and all as those things and tings disparate in time and place become entangled in U2’s ONE, PRIDE, BLOODY SUNDAY, even as you and I simultaneously get tangled up in Frostian sweeps of snowy wind and downy flake, Joycean streams of snow falling faintly and faintly falling throughout the universe, and Bob Dylanesque entanglements: tangled up in a bluish Hendrexian Haze of dueling entangled quarkian particles a zillion miles apart in a wondrous Stevie Wonderful World: Stevie Wonder sang, “They say heaven is ten zillion light years away . . .I say it lives inside of us . . .and it’s taking it so long ’cause we got so far to come. And people, let me hear it, My God, He lives inside of me, and it’s taking him so long ’cause we got so far to come . . Why does my color black or Irish genes make me a lesser man? Why U2 do they sing “Love is a Temple, love the Higher Power, Justice for All, then ask us to join them, and then try to make us crawl”? and as THE WHO sang, “We’re not gonna take it, never did and never will”, so we will:
PROSECUTE THE CROOKED FEDERAL PROSECUTORS, which is the subtitle of my soon to be published 30 page Pamphlet ala Thomas Paine:
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE BOSTON, MASS.
in other FBI nausea
https://www.postandcourier.com/news/retired-fbi-agent-pushes-for-probe-of-health-hazards-at/article_2459bfc0-1d96-11e8-9b98-7f14d8bae206.html
FBI agent pushes for probe of health hazards at South Carolina training site
Mar 11, 2018
A retired FBI agent wants a deeper investigation into possible health hazards law enforcement officers were exposed to during a tactical training class last year at a former South Carolina copper factory.
Michael Mulligan, a 21-year FBI veteran, said former colleagues retaliated against him when he raised concerns about mold, toxic chemicals and a lack of running water at the training site in Gaston, about 20 miles outside the state capital. After retiring in September, he filed complaints with the Department of Justice and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration over the April training session.
“The facility is in bad repair,” he wrote in a December complaint to the Justice Department. “I complained about the health aspects of training in such a facility and I was told to be quiet.”
Mulligan was sent from the FBI Training Academy in Virginia to conduct the four-day class. After he raised concerns about the site, he said, a lead agent from the bureau’s Columbia division criticized his job performance and accused him of gossiping. Mulligan said he was later shut out of a planned transfer to Charleston and told to go to Columbia instead — to work alongside the same people whose judgment he had questioned. He chose to give up his badge instead.
His whistleblower allegation comes at a time when the FBI is under fire on several fronts. President Donald Trump has blasted the agency’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, prompting complaints from conservatives of partisan bias. Others have assailed the agency for ignoring a tipster’s warning about Florida school shooter Nicholas Cruz. And, in recent days, reports have surfaced alleging that the FBI’s former deputy director misled investigators about an improper disclosure of sensitive information
also see
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/03/09/fbi-agent-who-killed-wife-self-had-grenade-launcher-but-no-domestic-violence-history.html
FBI agent who killed wife, self had a grenade launcher but no domestic violence history
also see
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/man-investigating-greitens-affair-was-himself-investigated-by-the-fbi/article_fd9ad552-57f7-5725-839d-5aa64432925a.html
Man investigating Greitens’ affair was himself investigated when he was a FBI agent
by the FBI for bigamy
Bigamy in the FBI
Tisaby worked for the FBI in 1979-90 and 1993-2002, his LinkedIn page says.
He was an inspector in the senior executive service at the FBI when investigators learned that he had remarried in 1998 before his divorce was final, according to a letter from the agency’s deputy director to Tisaby.
The letter says Tisaby claimed he believed that his divorce was final. But the director concluded that Tisaby had lied under oath to internal investigators, in part because of “considerable evidence in the divorce documents that contradicted your claims.”
The letter also says that Tisaby’s acceptance of a loan from a former subordinate at the FBI reflected “poor judgement” (sic) and a brief absence without leave after learning of the internal bigamy investigation displayed “a remarkable lack of judgement (sic).”
Tisaby violated the FBI’s “‘Bright Line’ policy” that prohibited lying under oath, a potential firing offense, but the letter says Tisaby’s actions were mitigated by the fact that it “did not directly involve the performance of your official duties.”
It says Tisaby was never criminally charged with bigamy, he had no prior disciplinary record and had “a positive record of years of service and job performance.”
His actions also were not widely known, he had suffered a tragic situation within his family and was considered to have good potential for “rehabilitation.”
Tisaby was demoted and suspended without pay for 60 days. His pay dropped to $78,000 from $125,000.
( MORE UPDATES LAY FALLOW )
( HAPPY SAINT PATRICK’S DAY )
I write what I fuckin’ want . Get it ?
Khalid is an envious boob . His objections are vague . His ideological baggage carried on this blog by anyone fool enough to engage this colossal charlatan . Not content to let this idiot’s nebulous nonsense die a natural death , it is now resurrected in service of …. What ?
It really does get kind of creepy .
I attended a Brecht play at UW a couple nights, ago. It was an excellent production of “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” Brecht’s allegory on the rise of Hitler set in 1930’s “gangster” Chicago. The drama is particularly apropos in the time of Trump. At the close of the last act, actor who played Arturo, after stripping off his stage mustache to show he was speaking out of character, made a stirring denunciation of Glorious Leader. The entire audience leap to their feet, and, delivered a thunderous standing ovation. Go big Red!
All praise to the revolutionary youth. Down with Trump. All power to the Dialectic!
Khalid. You posted this to John.
“Just the usual puerile bombast and sophomoric commentary. Get some new material, John. There’s no substance to your rants. It’s really not about feelings, man. Nobody cares. Use facts when you want to impress. Your spleen is unimportant.”
How about your gall bladder? Is that unimportant? You gotta hire some new writers.
This is mawkish drivel . The Fourth Wall is stormed by a heroic actor who has the magnificent courage to , Gasp ! , ( Really, Khalid ) , ” Strip off his mustache … ” and really get down and Revo with an audience composed fully of hysterical little red professor’s and their ilk . Such … Daring . This is really really ballsy , gritty stuff . This guy is really risking all with a pretty speech that invokes a comparison between a criminal megalomaniac who attempted World conquest , and a sitting American President who , if as described , would have not had to worry about a house full of pampered pseudo- intellectual Marxist pukes vomiting their gutless porridge of asinine social and political conclusions from the footlights . I went to a Brecht play and an A-HOLE decided to upstage one of the great playwrights of the twentieth century . Typical … SCHLOCK !
Wa-llahi! I meant to post that to everyone. My bad.
another Notheasta…….coming to Mass next week
scroll down for full story
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/latest-noreaster-triggers-blizzard-warnings-massachusetts-maine
Latest Nor’easter Triggers Blizzard Warnings from Massachusetts to Maine
Dr. Jeff Masters · March 13, 2018, 12:51 PM EDT
in other FBI nausea
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=UYypWtvsJeSIggffpIzICA&q=fbi+sock+puppet&oq=fbi+sock+puppet&gs_l=mobile-gws-hp.3..33i160.10796.19342..19940…0….143.1864.1j14……….1..mobile-gws-wiz-hp…..3..0j5j41j0i131j0i22i30j0i13j33i21.GdOZqRJGZfs%3D
Sockpuppet (Internet) – Wikipedia
Wikipedia › wiki › Sockpuppet_(Internet)
fbi sock puppet from en.wikipedia.org
A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term, a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock, originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an …
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
Military’s ‘sock puppet’ software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda
17 Mar 2011 09.19 EDT First published on Thu 17 Mar 2011 09.19 EDT
Gen David Petraeus has previously said US online psychological operations are aimed at ‘countering extremist ideology and propaganda’. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an “online persona management service” that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
The project has been likened by web experts to China’s attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.
The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as “sock puppets” – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.
The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations “without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries”.
Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: “The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US.”
He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to “address US audiences” with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.
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Centcom said it was not targeting any US-based web sites, in English or any other language, and specifically said it was not targeting Facebook or Twitter.
Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated messages, blogposts, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.
Centcom’s contract requires for each controller the provision of one “virtual private server” located in the United States and others appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world.
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Read more
It also calls for “traffic mixing”, blending the persona controllers’ internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that must offer “excellent cover and powerful deniability”.
The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then, OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
in other southie newz……
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/major-ruling-expected-stash-house-stings-racial-bias-53676887
Federal Judge: Phony ATF Stings Should End Because of Concerns of Racism
A federal judge in Chicago slammed the ATF on Monday over its phony stash-house stings, saying they primarily target people of color and should “be relegated to the dark corridors of the past.”
Chief U.S. District Judge Rube Castillo urged the federal agency to stop conducting stings that involve undercover agents promising lucrative payouts to suspects to steal nonexistent drugs from fake stash houses, ABC News reports.
“It’s time for these false stash-house cases to end and be relegated to the dark corridors of the past,” the judge said, reading parts of his 73-page ruling. “Our criminal justice system should not tolerate false stash-house cases anymore.”
Chief U.S. District Judge Rube Castillo
The judge said the operations have “inhere
That’s real funny . . .hit the spot . . .ha, ha, ha
Made me laugh out loud, and I thought of Chicago’s “Make me Smile” which I’m gonna go listen to right now
Thanx, Abe