HOW TO MAKE A KILLING: BIG PHARMA'S POISON PILLS

Big Pharma is learning from the BIG BOYS: to make a killing, sell to both sides.  Dyncorp. Ratheon. General Dynamics, Boeing.  EVERYBODY needs  tanks, guns, bombers, drones, artillery. Even frackers know that. Poison wells, sell bottled water.  One stone to kill two birds. And now Big Pharma takes its cue. Here’s how it works:

“We Come as Friends” dir. Hubert Sauper, 2013 “Happiness” dir. Thomas Balmès, 2013

TWO DOCUMENTARIES: ONE THEME:

Screened as part of the 2014 San Francisco Film Festival Program, both films, each in their way, project the consequences of the neocolonialist program in Africa’s Sudan (Sauper) and Asia’s Bhutan (Balmès). And both films offer telling contrasts in terms of cinematic approach to time, to cutting and intercutting techniques, to cultural diversity, and narrative to bring their message home: neocolonialism is destroying indigenous cultures the world over in its frenzy to grab resources (Sauper) or new markets (Balmès) for its products. 

AT LAST: DEMONSTRATORS' CONCERNS REACH TOKYO, AND TOKYO RUNS SCARED

On March 11, 2014, on the third anniversary of the initial explosions at Fukushima Daiichi, No Nukes Action Committee in San Francisco organized a nation-wide action in 10 U.S. cities, among them Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Most of these actions involved presenting a letter of concern  directly to the consulate or embassy in these cities. At the same time, No Nukes Action, in collaboration with Fukushima Response Bay Area held a demonstration at the Japanese Consulate in San Francisco followed by a die-in. During our previous 19 demonstrations, beginning in June of 2012 at the consulate, the consul had always been willing (and mostly very gracious) to meet us on the sidewalk in front of their offices, but on the third anniversary of the disaster, Consul Hayakawa categorically refused to meet with us or to accept delivery of our letter in person, advising the demonstration organizers that they could use “ordinary mail.” Perhaps, with the passage of the Secrets Preservation Act in December, 2013, and with our mass action involving 10 U.S. cities, the official consular offices have received orders from Tokyo. Perhaps it is safe to assume someone is running scared, a barometer that at last our concerns are being heard.

Pietà for Bradley Manning

The day we said good-bye, I imagined my arms pressed around his body one last time—because we knew none of us would be allowed to touch or to see him again.  We knew years of his young life had been surgically removed.

We Are a Nation of Yaws*

Now that the City of Detroit is on its receivership knees, now that Interstate highways and bridges are showing signs of metal fatigue, embrittlement, and decay, now that post offices are being shut down all over rural US, now that schools are being privatized, and students forced into life-time indentured servitude, graduating from supposedly “public” universities $150,000 in debt, the nation has come clean with its budgetary priorities: all you groveling folks asking for handouts, listen up. Moving forward, in the interests of preserving US national security, the national budget is gonna prioritize TORTURE. Members of Congress voted 315 to 109 in favor of preserving the torture program, and research has revealed that the winners received twice as much money from “Defense” (Ambrose Bierce “War”) Industries as the losers. But all received their routine Wassermans, which they do every time they vote, keeping them in the streets, plying their trade without transmitting STDs.  Wassermans are how you keep whores healthy.

The National Security Agency Expects to Replace God by Independence Day, 2013

In a communiqué issued today, the Department of Homeland security announced it intends to replace God.  Citing God’s recent cataract operation, the Department of Homeland Security will replace God’s all-seeing eye with a global oversight system capable of scooping up information about every living thing on Earth. “From now on, our eye is on the Turtle,” declared James R. Clapper, head of the NSA, “and on the Lizard, the Snake, and on the President of the European Union. When a reporter pointed out to Mr. Clapper that as such, no President of the European Union actually exists, Mr. Clapper brushed aside his objection, saying he told the truth, “as close as he could get it.”

“Pandora’s Promise:” an Infomercial

The recent release of the film, “Pandora’s Promise,” provides a forum for a small group of formerly anti-nuclear environmentalists to affirm their renewed faith in nuclear energy, notwithstanding the opening images of the wreckage of the Fukushima-Daiichi plant which still now continues to spew radioactive contamination into the planet’s air, water, soils, and ultimately into the food chain of all living beings on Earth.