Red Wiggla

watch this wreck

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

When they say "democracy" they mean a specific thing.

They mean: elections in which the outcome does not threaten the existing distribution of property and the existing terms on which foreign capital accesses domestic resources.

That kind of "democracy" is promoted. Defended. Supported with funding and observation missions and strongly worded statements when it is threatened.

A democracy that produces an Allende is not that kind of democracy.

An election that produces a Mosaddegh is not that kind of election.

A movement that produces a Lumumba is not that kind of movement.

The word "democracy" is doing the same work as the word "communist" in reverse.

"Communist" names what must be destroyed.

"Democracy" names what must be protected.

Both words, in operational American foreign policy usage, have the same referent underneath:

The arrangement in which Western capital can access the resources it needs on the terms it requires.

Governments that maintain that arrangement are "democratic."

Governments that threaten it are "communist."

The words are not descriptions.

They are assignments.

[Nick Cruse 🥋 @SocialistMMA]

Notice how the same shitlibs who cheered on the Mossad Color Revolution in Iran has nothing to say about the uprising in Bolivia against the fascist U.S. puppet government

Liberals are extremely evil and know exactly what they are doing

[Red Wiggla @redwiggla]

@DudespostingWs

[Red Wiggla @redwiggla]

@badflowerang @Shadoo_creeture stealth bomber moth

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

The U.S. Forest Service is spraying glyphosate (Roundup) across tens of thousands of acres of national forests this spring to support commercial timber production.

Following wildfires, forests naturally regenerate with diverse shrubs, wildflowers, and wildlife. However, a recent investigation reveals that the Forest Service and private logging companies are routinely applying the herbicide to eliminate competing native vegetation, favoring commercially valuable species such as Douglas fir and sugar pine.

This practice has created large areas with significantly reduced biodiversity, often described as "dead zones", where insect, bird, and plant populations have sharply declined. Glyphosate, classified by the World Health Organization as a probable human carcinogen, has seen its use in California national forests quintuple over the past two decades, reaching a record 266,000 pounds in 2023.

Local communities, environmental groups, and residents are raising concerns about potential impacts on water quality, endangered species (including salmon and rare foxes), and public health. Critics argue that prioritizing industrial timber production over ecological diversity conflicts with the broader mission of national forests as public lands.

The issue has intensified debates over forest management, balancing economic interests with long-term environmental and community health.

[Alain Astruc @alainastruc]

The only thing epic here is the aesthetic catastrophe.

Nolan is a cerebral director of the global anglo world, all his intelligence put to industrial ends. Grey matter for a grey world. Nothing in this trailer is Greek. Nothing is Mediterranean. No olive groves and no white stone burning under the sun and no salt and no pine and no sea-glare. A deracinated Odyssey, made for imaginary nobodies from nowhere.

The script feels like it's going to be the work of a diligent student who took down the events of the Odyssey one by one, forgetting that this is not a novel but an archaic poem, from a time when men and women lived each word as a heartbeat, who sang the soul and flesh of a people and of a world at once real and supernatural. A poem in which Telemachus does not say "my dad is coming home."

The Odyssey deserved a Parajanov or a Fellini or a Welles, someone larger than life, a Dionysian ogre, someone hungry, someone who could make a film that smells of figs and raw wool and roasting meat and tar and blood. Monsters that are actually monstrous and seductive witches with real venom and golden shields catching real light and banquets going on for days.

And the women of the poem, who are everywhere in Homer and seem so cold and dull here. Circe in her smoke and Calypso in her cave and Penelope at her loom, the sensuality of witches and the rigid loyalty of wives, all replaced by a fashion-armor Athena and a Penelope played as a strong American woman.

And then there is what the Odysseus of the trailer says: "No one can stand between me and home, not even the gods". The cunning sufferer who knew how to bow to divine forces turned into a defiant individualist who bows to no one. Greek cunning replaced by American autonomy. The poem's central lesson reversed in a single line of dialogue.

I usually don't mind Hollywood slop, but this has made me weirdly angry, and the film isn't even out yet. I feel as if a red line has been crossed, some hubris that has gone too far. The gods have been angered. How could they not be, with the decapitation of that statue at the end of the trailer? An iconoclastic gesture absent from Homer, usual with the monotheistic traditions that have spent centuries smashing pagan images.

Nietzsche said he would believe only in a god who knew how to dance. Apollo without Dionysus produces exactly this: cerebral, cold, unambiguous. I cannot trust a filmmaker who is not hungry enough to banquet with the gods.

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

Smedley Butler was one of the most decorated Marines in U.S. history.

He received two Medals of Honor, one of only 19 Americans ever to do so.

He spent thirty-three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, rising to Major General.

In 1935, he wrote a book called War Is a Racket.

He said:

"I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

One of the most decorated Marines in American history said this.

In 1935.

It is not assigned reading.

The football stadium still says, "Thank you for your service."

But the general who explained what that service was actually used for is still kept outside the official mythology.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

A restored 1905 Case 150 steam tractor, the largest ever built by Case, pulling 44 John Deere plows

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Sure plutocrats are killing our biosphere, but hey, at least they’re creating technology that lets you avoid the cognitive discomfort of writing your own words and thinking your own thoughts.

Sure the empire is butchering human beings at horrifying scale around the world, but on the bright side it’s creating refugees who will move to your country and bring you treats that you can order from an app on your phone.

Sure imperialist extraction is robbing the resources and exploiting the workers of the global south at extortionate fees, but on the other hand you get to wear a new outfit every day because the clothes you ordered online are dirt cheap thanks to transcontinental slave labor.

Sure our rulers are rapidly caging us in a digital surveillance network of ever-increasing intrusiveness and control, but golly gosh they just keep gifting us all these nifty free social media platforms that we simply cannot stop ourselves from scrolling through for some reason.

Sure capitalism is driving us toward collapse on multiple fronts while everyone gets sicker, poorer, dumber, crazier, and more miserable, but hey look, McDonald’s is bringing back the McRib.

Sure it’s only a matter of time until we find ourselves policed by armed robots and facial recognition murder drones and praying the government AI doesn’t shut off our digital money because our eyes lingered a bit too long on an anti-Israel meme, but at least we can have fun placing Polymarket bets on the next country the United States is going to bomb.

They take so very, very much, and we trade it away for so very, very little.

They steal our wealth, strangle our ecosystem and incinerate our future, and in return they give us bread and circuses that are just affordable enough to stop us from chopping off heads.

They exhaust us, abuse us, indoctrinate us, distract us, desensitize us, confuse us, overload us, misinform us and gaslight us, and in exchange we get a hundred overpriced streaming services to choose from and a thousand types of toothpaste.

They’re making our world worse and worse, and they’re making us worse as individuals, too. They’re poisoning our minds and darkening our hearts. Killing our conscience and amputating our empathy. It sucks to live in the shadow of the empire. There’s nothing natural or healthy about this dystopia.

And they’re getting it practically for free. A little propaganda, a sprinkling of mindless entertainment and a few treats, and we give them a whole planet to rape. They’re getting all the most vital parts of our world and all the most sacred parts of ourselves for a song.

We can’t keep letting them do this to us. We’ve got to wake up. Sometimes saying this feels as futile as imploring a loved one to leave their cult or break up with their abusive partner for the ten thousandth time. But that is what needs to happen.

And people do leave cults. People do exit abusive relationships. It only happens when they’re ready, and it’s got to come from them — but it does happen.

Here’s hoping we find some way to leave our abusive relationship with the empire before it’s too late.

[Red Wiggla @redwiggla]

@vashikoo @filmdweeb check out that “here comes mr jordan” poster behind them. a film about a dead man who possesses another man’s body…

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

Explaining why they want to ban cash

[Red Wiggla @redwiggla]

@Noirchick1 Mrs Peel!

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

Destroying the @InternetArchive's @WayBackMachine would be the equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria - one of the worst losses of knowledge in history.

Media giants are now threatening to do this.

We can't let this happen.

Pass it on.

[Red Wiggla @redwiggla]

@NoContextHumans

[Red Wiggla @redwiggla]

@odhurt from the new spiderman movie trailer

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

FYI if your main reason for caring about Trump raining military explosives on Iran is that it will help Democrats in the midterms, you’re a piece of shit.

[Vivian @suchnerve]

The United States Postal Service, USPS, doesn’t “lose” money. It costs money. It’s a public service. Don’t fall for the privatization propaganda.

[Slingshot News @NewsSlingshot]

🚨😱BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Federal Police Assault Native Americans, Threaten To KILL Their ‘Spirit Horses’ On Trail Of Truth Pilgrimage To D.C.

What do YOU think of this assault on the Muwekma Ohlone?

Let us know in the comments, and follow @NewsSlingshot for more! ⬇️