If so, how?

We are surrounded by the majestic statement of the sea
and the ever changing murmur of the forests;
we share all these miracles with our lively cousins:
the ones that fly
the ones that crawl
the ones that swim
the ones that run
all seeking the blessings of Mother Nature.

But all the ones that walk:
the builders of cathedrals, pyramids,
great walls and temples to the sun,
we still look at each other with hatred and misgivings
while seeking the forgiveness of a forgotten God.

-- by Adolfo Chipoco, MD

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’”― Edgar D. Mitchell

Trump is short fingered for “Spuh-Spurk Triple-D Bum” or ”Sadistic Psychotic Sociopathic Perverted Criminally Deranged Depraved Deviant Bankrupt Unstable Moron.”

Crew of the USS Pueblo salute.



North Korea: Love It or Leave It!

We the People are the owners and operators of the United States — not the traitors, criminals, gangsters, liars, perverts and sundry hypocrites of the GOP.

If they’ll take me, I’m with these four outstanding patriots.

Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism

by Fintan O’Toole
The Irish Times, Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 05:00

To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism.

It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.

Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

Snip...

To see, as most commentary has done, the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children as a “mistake” by Trump is culpable naivety. It is a trial run – and the trial has been a huge success. Trump’s claim last week that immigrants “infest” the US is a test-marketing of whether his fans are ready for the next step-up in language, which is of course “vermin”. And the generation of images of toddlers being dragged from their parents is a test of whether those words can be turned into sounds and pictures. It was always an experiment – it ended (but only in part) because the results were in.

Continues...

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375

And I do mean Operative.

When prosecutors gave Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart plea deal in 2007, they agreed not to charge four women allegedly involved in recruiting dozens of underage girls for abuse.

By Pilar Melendez
The Daily Beast, July 9, 2019

For decades, financier Jeffrey Epstein allegedly abused dozens of underage girls in a sex-trafficking enterprise, according to a new federal indictment unsealed in the Southern District of New York.

But in order to successfully “create a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit” and expand his network of possible targets, he relied on the loyalty and organizational skills of his employees, prosecutors claim.

Snip...

In Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea deal in Florida—which was granted by then-prosecutor and now-Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta and other DOJ attorneys, without informing the billionaire’s alleged victims—four women are named as possible accomplices. Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement, which sentenced him to 18 months in prison, also granted immunity to the four women and any other “potential co-conspirators," identified in the document as “including but not limited to Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, or Nadia Marcinkova.”

“While Epstein was at the head of the international sex trafficking organization, that conspiracy could not have functioned without many others playing their part,” attorney Paul Cassell, who represents multiple victims of Epstein, told The Daily Beast after Epstein’s arrest on Saturday. “Jane Doe 1 and 2 will continue to fight for all of Epstein’s co-conspirators to be held accountable in New York, Florida, and anywhere else they committed crimes.”

Continues...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epsteins-alleged-accomplices-where-are-sarah-kellen-nadia-marcinkova-adriana-ross-and-lesley-groff