General

“Why are you crying, Little Timmy?”
“I had to do it. I’m upset”
“Now, now, Little Timmy. You know you didn’t have to execute those eleven defenseless prisoners. You really can’t say you were forced to do it.”
“But if I didn’t kill them, the people of Virginia would think I was weak and might not like me anymore.”
“Timmy, you spared one prisoner scheduled for execution, so everybody knows you had the power to stop them all.”
“Now you’re making me upset all over again.”

We are living in troubled times. Of late, every day we see murder, mayhem and bloodshed, from a few bodies to even thousands. We see it in media headlines and hear it on cable news. It seems that different forms of madness have gripped various countries and cultures, but the US is displaying a special kind: racism.

There can be little doubt that we are living through an extraordinary, and in many ways unprecedented, era. Times of uncertainty and tremendous upheaval for sure, but also positive times, in which large numbers of people are becoming energised and politically engaged. Political parties in many countries are fracturing, as internal differences surface and the old dualities of left and right fail to respond to the needs and demands of the people.

He was the kingpin of the whole affair by suggesting it. In December 2015, the US Republican presumptive nominee for President, Donald Trump, came up with that daft suggestion which seems so utterly devoid of informed meaning.  Ban Muslims from entering the United States and the phenomenon of terrorism would somehow be abated.
His prepared statement was characteristically dramatic in the manner of reality television, envisaging a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

It wouldn’t be strange for a contemporary 2D artist to imagine her sketchbook as a kind of immediate scientific laboratory, a site where her repeated experiments and knowledge-building practices get drawn into existence. Moreover, the art that accumulates within the pages of the artist’s sketchbook would likely provide a unique description of her as an individual, especially after a lifetime of drawing. And, the ultimate composite portrait comprised of so many transformed pages would likely be an intimate one.

This is another occasional article in my crusade to put venal corporate America and its pawn, corrupted, captive government, in their well deserved slime light, one that can’t be missed by anyone who is observant and not fooled. Nevertheless, this article may shed some further slime light.
Industry Overview

The Indypendent — This election season has been a game changer for left strategies in the United States. Suddenly, radicals who had dismissed the electoral arena entirely as forever compromised by corporate power are rethinking the possibilities a national platform can provide. Despite facing down formidable odds, Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist running a left-populist campaign, nearly closed the gap with his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton.

One simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian… one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.
– J William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power

The  tenure of  Margaret Sullivan as Public Editor of the New York Times (NYT) ended on April 16, 2016, with her column “Public Editor No. 5 Is Yesterday’s News.” This followed four years of  challenging work and the 691 columns and blogs she produced in carrying out her role, which she describes as  “spokesperson for readers.” Sullivan was the fifth and best of the paper’s public editors, but there were serious limits to what she did or could do in that position, and she must have known and accepted them in advance.

Voice of the Ex-Offender (VOTE) and 8 individuals filed a class action voting rights challenge for 70,000 people in Louisiana saying they are illegally prohibited from voting.  The VOTE suit charges that the Louisiana legislature wrongfully and unconstitutionally passed a law disallowing people convicted of felonies from voting if they are on probation or parole.