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Date: 10/06/15

An American Trilogy

Three items of recommended reading and viewing for you this evening, chums.

Whilst all three are related most directly to the good ol' Land Of The Cree (Before They Were Liquidated), they all have applications to the wider world (that place that the inhabitants of 'cities' such as Skrooyoo, Id. believe to be somewhere in Wisconsin).

First off: have you ever wondered how it is that - however barbarous, egregious or just plain fricking batshit their words and deeds may be - those who have power and status in our glorious Free World™ seem to manage to keep that power and status, no matter how much they may piss the massed millions of their victims off?

Well, author David Wong explains here the Five Ways Powerful People Trick You Into Hating Protesters.

Of course, it always helps if you have the corporate media largely or entirely on your side when you are trying to get away with Grand Assholism; and it's a greater help still if those media outlets not only prostitute and censor themselves but launch a concerted campaign of denigration against those few who wilfully refuse to toe The Party Line. Here, Glenn Greenwald instructs us in the lessons to be learned about some of the 'reporting' by US 'news' outlets on the information given to us by Edward Snowden two years after its release, not least of which is the connivance of corporate media with their own enmuzzlement.

Finally, and to end on a note of uplift, here's John Waters, vieux enfant terrible of cinema, giving the Commencement Address (*) at the graduation ceremony of Rhode Island School of Design the other week:

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(Thanks to Wings Over Scotland's Twitter feed for the first link, and to BoingBoing for the second and third).

* A phrase which confused me for years: why is it called a 'Commencement' address when it happens at the end of someone's college life?