Court hearings in Britain over the US administration’s extradition case against Julian Assange begin in earnest next week. The decade-long saga that brought us to this point should appall anyone who cares about our increasingly fragile freedoms.
Clinton, Talbott, Rice
In my previous article, I discussed the role of the Brookings Institute’s founder Strobe Talbott as an integrated part of the puzzle behind Russia Gate and also his indoctrination as a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford alongside his room mate Bill Clinton in 1966.
Let us march as long as
The migrant labors, forced
Out of jobs due to lockdown,
Walk the streets and highways
And railway tracks to reach home.
Let us march as long as jobs
Are eaten away by failing
Economy and pandemic-driven
Recession and George Floyds
Are throttled to death.
Maybe we are black…
Maybe we are brown…
Maybe we are African…
Maybe we are Asian…
And you are white.
But the blood running in
Our veins is red.
Let us not spill it on the
Streets for vain cause
In Mental Health Court (for Tatiana)
If you are competent
you are criminal,
if you cannot distinguish
an inkblot from a summons,
the doctors will pronounce
you are a psychotic.
If you lie,
you will be thrown to the lions,
if you tell the truth,
you will be thrown to the crocodiles.
We are all hoping for treatment
which means
we are all hoping
we are sick.
The sheriffs will transport you
at the expense of the state
unless
there is a sister and a cousin
who volunteer
JT loves drawing sandhill cranes. Extruded from memory, JT sits on the sagging bumper of the Ford RV as he pushes capillaries of charcoal into the sky he delivers on the sketch pad paper.
Unending fire sky, he tells himself. He wants to imagine the sky this way, Turneresque, electric, something like all those village buildings he left behind in Huehuetenango what seems like a life time ago.
My night starts with a deuce on table 24.
I walk up, introduce myself and thank them for joining us this evening. Before I can ask them if they’d like to begin their dinner with a cocktail, the woman reaches into her purse and slaps a Groupon down on the table, essentially broadcasting their intention to eat on the cheap.
Fuck me. It’s the last day of the month, I’m $250 short of making rent, and was hoping for a section full of 20 percenters tonight to help me get over the hump. Hopefully these couponers aren’t an omen of things to come.
Though most consumers don’t seem to realize it, visiting a restaurant places them on a public stage where their true natures are readily on display. People often shed their facades when dining out, exhibiting behaviors they normally wouldn’t dream of doing at either their own places of employment or other social settings.
And that’s usually where the fun begins.
“Table one wants to see a manager.”
As a restaurant manager, my lap is a proverbial dumping ground where servers regularly invite grumpy and entitled customers to sit. In the prevailing I don’t get paid enough to deal with this shit culture which permeates the service staffs in most eateries, the feces usually rises to the top – and most days I just happen to find myself occupying the highest rung on the crapometer ladder.
Barney came walking back into the living room from his kitchen holding a sandwich baggie and a bottle of cheap scotch. “I’m gonna teach that fuckin’ post office a thing or two about losin’ peoples unemployment checks,” he announced.
He took a pull off the bottle and his entire body trembled as he swallowed. I don’t think he’d been entirely sober since he’d been fired from the restaurant eight weeks ago. He handed the bottle to me and I had a tug off it as well. Nasty shit, but effective. Sometimes being a cheap drunk is the best you can do.
