Pulp - Tina

 Screwing in a charity shop

On top of black bin bags
Full of donations
The smell of digestive biscuits in the air
Welcome back to dreamland
We all know your name
T I N A, still reads her book on the train

somente lixo

 

Nova biografia de Guimarães Rosa destaca trajetória multifacetada do autor de 'Grande sertão': 'Viveu várias vidas numa só'

 

 

"— Rosa comete atitudes muito rebeldes e que o colocaram em risco — diz Nossa. — Como autor, ele já foi muito criticado por não ser engajado, algo que o incomodava muito. Ele argumentava lembrando que seus personagens são sertanejos, boiadeiros, vaqueiros, gente atravessada por conflitos reais, por violência, por questões sociais profundas. Ou seja, há um engajamento ali, mas que não passa pelo discurso explícito, e sim pela forma como ele constrói esse Brasil. "

leia resenha de BOLIVAR TORRES

sobre livro de Leonencio Nossa  

We all live in Jeffrey Epstein's world

 

 

" It’s not just the rampant misogyny that oozes from the pages of these documents. Women as chattel. Women as objects. Women as objects of both hate and desire.

It’s darker than that. Because it’s something that we do not want to see, that we cannot comprehend, that’s as sickening as it’s pervasive.

What Epstein shows us is that we live in a paedophiliac culture.

It’s not just Epstein. That’s what these files reveal. "

read stack by Carole Cadwalladr 

We all live in Jeffrey Epstein's world

Queimem a bruxa!

DAHMER

 

 

MUSCLE FOR BRAIN

 

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR >

  For reasons that are not mysterious
The weak are sent to the wall
They have reservations in heaven
Down here, they’re not so fashionable
Save me from the people who would save me from my sin
They got muscle for brains

– Gang of Four, “Muscle for Brains”

The Iran war is a war of choice. But that doesn’t tell us much, does it? All wars are wars of choice. The questions are: was it a necessary choice? Was it a good choice? Was it a rational choice? Were the consequences considered? Who made the choice and why? We still don’t know the answers to these questions.

The Iran war is a war of aggression, launched by two nuclear powers against a non-nuclear nation that has been weakened by years of economic sanctions, targeted assassinations, industrial sabotage and cyber-attacks. This is a war of aggression that was initiated during bad-faith negotiations by the US, where diplomacy was used as a cover for a looming bombardment. The gloating over the ease with which US and Israeli airstrikes decimated Iran’s leadership was appalling, given the circumstances under which it occurred. Wars of aggression are crimes. But who is left to enforce international laws? If you can get away with a genocide, as the US’s war partner has done, every conceivable atrocity is fair game. Israel turned Gaza into rubble and still the bombs fall.

What is the objective? To destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities? To kill the Ayatollah? To topple the Islamic Republic? To emasculate the Republican Guard? To de-industrialize Iran? To wreck the Iranian economy? To “liberate” Iranian women? To spark a revolution? Who knows. Probably not Donald Trump. He claims he’ll “feel it in his bones,” though surely he meant his bone spurs.

The US generals don’t seem to have much of an idea, even though nearly 40% of the US military is now zeroed in on Iran, burning through billions of dollars of weapons every week. If we take the bombastic Pete Hegseth at his word, it’s to “rain death and destruction” on Iran and Iranians without much, if any, discretion on who is being killed or what is being destroyed. That sounds about right to me.

The timid Democrats have criticized Trump for not having a “plan,” as if having a plan would legitimize his criminal war. But they do have a plan and the plan is maximum destruction. The plan is for a spectacle of bomb-blast light shows and mass death. One of the first kill shots was an attack on an Iranian girls’ school that murdered 200 people, including teachers and students. Helluva way to liberate women.

Trump tried to blame the girls’ school strike on the Iranians, saying they’d somehow acquired a US-made Tomahawk cruise missile. Even the Pentagon wouldn’t back up this murderous lie. The school was on the target list. Bad intelligence? Not if the intelligence came from the Israelis, as it likely did. As we know from Gaza, the Israelis targeted schools as if they were ballistic missile batteries.

US airstrikes destroyed Iran’s Russian-supplied air defenses within the first couple of days of the war. Since then, the US and the Israelis can bomb at will, the only risk being an F-35 encountering a little rain or wind that might send it into a tailspin.

Every bomb now is being dropped on a defenseless population. And every bomb from now on is likely to turn that population, even those violently opposed to the rule of the Mullahs, against the bombers. For a war waged by two hyper-nationalist countries, the attackers don’t seem to realize that nationalism cuts both ways, that each bombing of a school, hospital, mosque, factory, desalination plant, or historic site solidifies the bombed in support of their country. And this isn’t just any country: this is Iran, this Persia, this is one of the oldest, proudest and most sophisticated civilizations on the planet. It’s a nation with a long cultural memory and it won’t soon forget the day the US and Israeli missiles hit four oil refineries and the skies of Tehran rained Black Death over a city of 13 million people.

Pete Hegseth boasted that there “will be no quarter given.” What does that mean? It means prisoners of war will be killed. It means the injured will be killed or left to die. Hegseth is a creep, but his fustian outbursts provide clarity on the sadistic objectives of the war. “We have only just begun to hunt,” Hegseth crowed. “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” Close the door, put out the light! Hegseth dismisses war crimes as an artifact of woke lawyers and seems eager to have the troops under his command commit every one on the books. No wonder he wanted to court-martial Sen. Mark Kelly for appearing in that video advising US troops to disobey illegal orders.

Trump has never spent much, if any, time considering the consequences of his decisions in business, sex or politics. In fact, he brags about going on his gut. But making a bad bet on a steak company, mail-in university (diploma mill), porn star or casino is one thing. Wrecking the global economy by dismissing the likelihood that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz if attacked reflects a kind of hubristic madness that makes Hitler’s decision to invade Russia seem sound by comparison. But Trump learned in business that the costlier his mistakes, the more likely he was to get bailed out. He’s rarely paid a personal price for any of his blunders. Now he’s in the position of begging countries and leaders that he has ritually humiliated and deprecated as part of his tiresome political schtick to come to his rescue and help calm the chaos his impulsive and criminal war has set in motion. He may well find he’s bombed himself into a crater this time so deep there’s no clear path out, no easy fix, no insurance policy to shield him against the political and economic shockwaves he has unleashed.

The blowback from this war will be intense and is likely to last for decades, assuming the planet has that many years left. The war has already spread across the Middle East to Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Dubai, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Yemen. The oil shock from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has jolted an already wobbly global economy. Soon, refugees will be pouring out of Iran and Lebanon. In choosing to go to war aligned only with Israel, the US will inherit its pariah status across the Muslim world and beyond. Trump doesn’t seem capable of learning lessons, but he may soon find out that it’s easier to impulsively choose to start a war of aggression than to decide when and on what terms the war ends.

COUNTERPUNCH 

E o que querem os iranianos?

  

"O Irã é uma sociedade cujos níveis de desenvolvimento humano e de educação contradizem a imagem de medievalismo que tantas vezes lhe é atribuída. Segundo o Relatório de Desenvolvimento Humano 2025 do Pnud (Programa das Nações Unidas para o Desenvolvimento), o Irã integra a categoria "desenvolvimento humano elevado", com pontuação acima do Brasil, ou seja, é um país com bases sociais e educacionais relativamente sólidas. Em dezenas de outros indicadores socioeconômicos, como expectativa de vida à nascença ou anos médios de escolaridade da população adulta, o Irã está na dianteira do Brasil.

Ao contrário da imagem internacional, o regime iraniano não governa uma massa compacta de fanáticos religiosos ou uma sociedade etnicamente fragmentada ou mirrada; governa uma sociedade antiga relativamente instruída e urbanizada, com expectativas sociais suficientemente elevadas para produzir uma cidadania politicamente exigente, mesmo quando sua ordem política permanece inquisitorial. A história milenar da civilização persa pode ser testemunhada com uma visita a Persépolis ou à praça Naqsh-e Jahan, em Isfahan."

leia analise de RODRIGO TAVARES

 

The Isley Brothers - Summer Breeze, Pts. 1 & 2

    Summer breeze

Makes me feel fine Blowing through the jasmine in my mind in memoriam DAVID CROFT

 

Master: Atendimento Premium

MIGUEL PAIVA

 

 

 

CAZO

VASQS

 

 

Carmen Miranda - E bateu-se a chapa (Assis Valente)

 E bateu-se a chapa, meu bem, nessa posição,

Eu com a cabeça pendida no teu coração
E hoje quando passas por mim nem me dás valor (que eu sei)
Mas eu vou contar a todo mundo que eu já fui o teu amor

In search of Banksy, Reuters found the artist took on a new identity

 

"The British street artist’s identity has been debated, and closely guarded, for decades. A quest to solve the riddle took Reuters from a bombed-out Ukrainian village to London and downtown Manhattan — and uncovered much more than a name."

read report BY SIMON GARDNER, JAMES PEARSON AND BLAKE MORRISON 

In search of Banksy, Reuters found the artist took on a new identity

Propaganda in the Age of Shitposting

"Iran is winning the propaganda war.

Everyone can see it. No one in power will admit it.

There’s no scoreboard, no official metric, no government briefing where someone stands up and says, “we’re losing the internet.” That’s not how this works.

But spend five minutes on your timeline and tell me I’m wrong.

Because what you’re seeing right now isn’t just propaganda, it’s self-aware memetic propaganda. "

READ MORE> Propaganda in the Age of Shitposting

Rua do Ouvidor

 

Raphael and the Renaissance of Divine Beauty

 

 "Why is she holding a unicorn?

A little baby unicorn: a foal with soft fur, a snub nose, a smooth muzzle, and a horn like a narwhal’s tusk spiraling up to heaven. The maiden that Raphael painted around 1505 cradles the critter, tender and tame. She’s sitting upright, at a slight angle, in this half-length profile. She’s gazing out and to the side: the same breath-of-life pose in which Leonardo placed a brunette named Lisa a few years before.

But why a unicorn?'"

READ THE ARTICLE BY  JASON FARAGO

 

 

 

Sam Kieth, Creator of Surreal Comic Book Series The Maxx, Dies at 63

 

 

 A cocreator of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, he dreamed up The Maxx as a homeless character in the real world and a superhero in a subconscious realm. It was adapted for an MTV series 

 “The closest thing I could think of was that it’s Don Quixote, a person stuck in an unpleasant real world who dreams of a world where he has control and power, but keeps returning to unpleasant reality.”

 

read obit By George Gene Gustines 

 

 

Ar Fresco

RAFAEL SALIMENA

 

Trump’s Little Excursion Hits the Straits

 

 JEFFREY ST. CLAIR 

Check out this paragraph from Tulsi Gabbard’s prepared text in her opening statement before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday:

As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer [July 2025], Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There have been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability. The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement.

There you have it. Trump’s Director of National Intelligence obliterated Trump’s case for going to war with Iran. Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium was destroyed last year and they’ve made no effort to resume the program. Curiously, however, Gabbard elided this paragraph during her live testimony before the committee. She claimed, under questioning from Sen. Mark Warner, that she skipped that crucial paragraph because she realized that she was “running out of time.” Her time in office is likely running out, as it should.

Gabbard’s deputy, Joe Kent, resigned from office this week, claiming correctly that Iran posed no imminent threat to the US. Kent should know. As director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center, Kent saw all of the intel that Trump apparently refused to take the time to read.  Joe Kent’s no “think-tank pansy.” He’s a hard-ass former Marine who courted the votes of Neo-Nazis and white supremacists during his failed run for Congress in western Washington. But according to Trump, who nominated him for office, he always knew Kent was “very, very weak on security.” Funny, he hired him and didn’t fire him. Kent walked out of the Executive Office building on his own volition.

So we now have it from within the highest ranks of Trump’s own administration that the casus belli for the war on Iran was faked, in an even more blatant sham than the manufactured case for going to war on Iraq, a war Trump falsely claims he opposed from the beginning. But, like John Kerry, Trump was for the Iraq war before he was against it. 

It’s worth reiterating that even before the June 2025 bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites, there’s evidence that Iran was intent on building a nuclear weapon (and a lot of evidence that it wasn’t), even though perhaps they should have, given that possession of a stockpile of nuclear weapons seems to be the only deterrent against getting attacked by the US or Israel. Just this week, North Korea was gleefully launching 10 ballistic missiles into the Pacific during joint military exercises by the US and South Korea without even a squeak of protest from Kim’s former pen pal, Donald Trump.

Again, Tulsi Gabbard said as much not long before Trump’s Operation of Midnight Hammer, testifying before Congress that “the intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” When asked about Gabbard’s testimony, Trump snarled: “I don’t care what she says. She’s wrong. My intelligence community is wrong,” But he didn’t fire Gabbard for being wrong and publicly contradicting him.

Trump, Rubio, and Witkoff have repeatedly claimed that Iran was merely weeks away from having not only a stockpile of enriched uranium but a nuclear weapon: “If we didn’t hit within two weeks, they would’ve had a nuclear weapon. When crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen.” (March 4) Trump has continued to push this lie in the last few days, as his war has gone south: “[W]e’re doing very, very well in Iran, knocking the hell out of them. And you have to do that. We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon. They were two weeks away — in my opinion, two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.” (March 17)  Once again, it’s Trump’s position that his own top intelligence appointees are lying about his lies about going to war against Iran.

Still, not many Americans bought what Trump was trying to sell. Support for the Iran war remains at around 40 percent. And the fog of lies began to rapidly dissipate when Trump’s little excursion ran aground on the Strait of Hormuz, shattering the global economy and unleashing chaos across the region.

In an interview with Medhi Hassan, Senator Chris Van Hollen claimed Trump was duped by Netanyahu into going to war with Iran:

They’ve had these constantly shifting rationales, and the reason they have to keep shifting them is because when they say that one thing was their goal – like getting rid of Iran’s nuclear capacity, they claimed – that turns out to be just not true….Netanyahu just a few weeks ago said he’d been waiting 40 years for an American president to join him in attacking Iran. And in Donald Trump, he finally found somebody stupid enough and reckless enough to actually do it.

Sorry, Senator, but this lets Trump off the hook. Iran has been on Trump’s targeting radar since Obama signed the nuclear deal. He assassinated Qasem Suleimani, head of the IRG’s Al Quds Force, in 2020 and bombed three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last June. As the Epstein scandal engulfed Trump, he began talking up another bombing campaign on Iran and the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores fed his delusion that he could pull off a similar pain-free operation in Iran, a delusion Netanyahu was eager to stoke, against all intelligence to the contrary.

Perhaps Trump will now replace Joe Kent with Newt Gingrich, who is very, very strong on security. So strong that Newt, the Edward Teller of our tormented times, advised Trump to drop 12 thermo-nuclear bombs on Iran to blast out a canal by-passing the Strait of Hormuz. In other words, someone with the guts to start a nuclear holocaust to prevent one.

COUNTERPUNCH

  

When a Not-So-Dark Knight and His Sidekick Saved a Wacky Gotham

 

 

Joel Schumacher apologized for “Batman & Robin,” his corny 1997 superhero movie, but thanks to its ice puns and bat nipples, it’s since become an accidental parody worth howling at. 

read review by MAYA SALAM 

 

 

 

"Wild Thing" Original Version by Jordan Christopher & The Wild Ones (1965)

 in memoriam CHIP TAYLOR

wild thing
you make my heart sing

Nossa Senhora da Lapa dos Mercadores

 

Tim Maia – Nobody Can Live Forever

  One thing you have to agree with me

That nothing's for sure
Nothing's for sure
Nobody can live forever
And everybody is the same

Naval Royal Colege

 

Nossa Senhora da Lapa dos Mercadores

 

Royal Naval College

 

Greenwich

 

A night when the Oscars almost mattered

 

 

"I am a grump when it comes to all things Oscars. As I have written before, it’s not just the empty speeches, the fashion fixation, the dull box office discourse. It’s that the very idea of competition feels to me like a hammer to the art of appreciating films.

This year, some of the winners openly agreed with me. But as I watched, there was a strange sensation too. Was it a bit of hope?"

read review by John Bleasdale  

A night when the Oscars almost mattered - by John Bleasdale

Calling All Angels !

 

 JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams
When everyman is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
When silence drowns the screams?
Confusion will be my epitaph

– Peter Sinfield, King Crimson, “Epitaph”

+ Let’s review the shifting rationales (all fallacious) for Trump/Netanyahu’s criminal attack on Iran that has quickly engulfed much of the Middle East: Israel was going to attack Iran and Iran would respond by attacking the US; Iran was going to launch a pre-emptive attack on Israel; Iran was going to launch a preemptive attack on the US; Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon; Iran was close to having intercontinental missiles capable of striking the US; Iran was governed by lunatics. Netanyahu talked Trump into doing it. MBS convinced Trump to do it. Trump convinced Netanyahu to do it. Let confusion be their epitaph. (It will almost certainly be ours.)

+ Marco Rubio: “The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked [by Israel], that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.”

CNN Reporter: Yesterday, you told us Israel was going to strike Iran and that’s why we needed to get involved. But today the president said Iran–

Rubio: No. Were you there yesterday?

CNN Reporter: Yes. I asked the question.

+ The “preventative war” rationale, whichever of the shifting versions you choose, is preposterous. A preemptive strike on US targets by Iran would have done minimal damage to the US arsenal in the region and ensured the massive counter-attack the Iranians were seeking to prevent. And, even the Pentagon knows it wasn’t true…

Reporter: Thousands of Americans are stranded. Why wasn’t there an evacuation plan?

Trump: Well, because it happened all very quickly, we thought, and I thought maybe more so than most. I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack….If anything, I forced Israel’s hand.”

+ Sen. Mark Warner: “There was no imminent threat to the United States by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the US, then we are in uncharted territory.”

+ Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons. Iran has none. If Iran were really planning a preemptive strike on Israel, that would pretty much invalidate the notion of nuclear deterrence. Let’s get rid of them all! On the other hand, would Trump and Israel have risked launching a preemptive attack on Iran if the Islamic Republic possessed its own nuclear arsenal? Unlikely. (It’s more likely Trump would have written love letters to the Ayatollah, ala his endearing correspondence with Kim Jong-Un.) I think it’s safe to conclude that Iran had no plans to preemptively attack Israel or the US.

+ Rafael Grossi, Director General of the IAEA, told the nuclear inspection agency’s board on March 2 that inspectors found no structured effort by Iran to build nuclear weapons, despite ongoing strikes on sites like Natanz. The U.S. and Israel launched operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury on February 28, damaging above-ground structures but sparing underground centrifuges and causing no radiation leaks. While leaders like Trump and Netanyahu cited imminent threats, U.S. intelligence sources and Russia disputed the urgency, and Grossi called for diplomacy to prevent escalation.

Reporter: “So, why did the US attack?”

Rubio:  “Iran is run by lunatics.”

+ Speaking of lunatics, Paul White, the spiritual advisor to Trump and head of the White House Faith Office, spoke in tongues to call down angels from Africa and South America to strike Iran…

COUNTERPUNCH 

 

 

 

Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine - Country Joe & The Fish

 

She hides in an attic concealed on a shelf
Behind volumes of literature based on herself
And runs across the pages like some tiny elf
Knowing that it's hard to find
Stuff way back in her mind,
Winds up spending all of her time
Trying to memorize every line,
Sweet Lorriane, ah, Sweet Lorraine.

CCBB

 

National Maritime Museum

 

Roscoe Robinson - That's Enough (in memoriam)

 

I don′t want security

I just want you to save your love for me

And that's enough

That′s enough, baby, that's enough

Vida de cachorro

 

Discurso contra fim da 6 x 1 ecoa a resisencia ao 13o salário e a Lei Aurea

 

 

LEONARDO SAKAMOTO

Toda vez que uma proposta para aumento nos direitos de trabalhadores ganha corpo no Brasil, uma trombeta ecoa: a do apocalipse econômico. O curioso é que ela apita de forma semelhante há mais de um século, mudando apenas o contexto histórico. Vão-se os rótulos, ficam as garrafas.

Da assinatura da Lei Áurea no Império passando pelo debate sobre o 13º salário no governo João Goulart até a recente mobilização pelo fim da escala 6x1 sob a gestão Lula, o roteiro vai sendo plagiado. O país vai quebrar. O desemprego vai disparar. A inflação vai devorar tudo. E, no fim, o trabalhador sairá pior do que entrou.

O debate sobre os prós e contras da redução da escala e da jornada semanal é importante e precisa ser promovido, mas o discurso do medo tem sido, mais uma vez, o argumento central de muita gente.

Em 1888, quando a libertação (formal) dos escravizados se caminhava para virar lei, parte da elite tratou a abolição como sentença de morte da economia. A lavoura iria à ruína, não haveria braços, as fazendas afundariam em dívidas. E a liberdade concedida, assim, de repente, produziria caos social. A impossibilidade do Brasil sem mão de obra cativa apareceu como argumento técnico, racional, jurídico. O medo foi embalado como caridade, afinal, os próprios escravizados seriam prejudicados por não terem quem deles cuidasse.

Décadas depois, quando se discutia a criação da gratificação natalina que se tornaria o 13º salário, o discurso preservou o mesmo espírito. Editorialistas advertiam que um holerite extra levaria à quebradeira generalizada. Patrões anunciavam demissões em massa como consequência inevitável. A inflação seria galopante. O benefício, ironicamente, prejudicaria quem pretendia proteger. O trabalhador, mais uma vez, foi usado como argumento contra o próprio interesse.

Agora, no debate sobre o fim da escala 6x1, a trilha sonora retorna com arranjos contemporâneos. Fala-se na inviabilidade para comércio e serviços, na matemática impossível das pequenas empresas (detalhe: o Sebrae fez uma pesquisa apontando que a maioria dos pequenos negócios não vê impacto negativo), no repasse automático aos preços. Ressurge o fantasma da informalidade: se encarecer o emprego formal, a solução será pejotizar — como se o avanço da pejotização já não estivesse em curso no julgamento do Tema 1389 no STF. A precarização viria como efeito colateral inevitável da tentativa de civilizar a escala.

UOL 

 

  

John Hammond - Mean Old Frisco (1963)

 

IN MEMORIAM

Well, that mean old dirty Frisco

And that low down Santa Fe

Mean old Frisco and that low down Santa Fe

You know they take my girl away

Lord, and they blow back out on me

(Muddy Waters_)

Rua do Carmo

 

Chomsky and Epstein

 

Jeffrey St. Clair >

 
+ I started getting press calls about Chomsky and Epstein, before I’d looked at the new revelations and saw just how deep the relationship was. (“Why is the press calling the press,” I said, “if I have anything to say, I’ll write myself,” refusing any comment.)

The latest batch is very ugly and, I think, indefensible. It’s especially disgusting that Noam saw it necessary to shame the victims as hysterics. When it was first revealed that Chomsky had some kind of relationship with Epstein, I was surprised, but not terribly shocked. I assumed he was trying to pick Epstein’s very deep pockets for money for his MIT projects. Hell, Noam had taken money from the Pentagon, DIA and other unsavory sources in the past. There’s no such thing as clean money. But still…

It’s also very hard to understand how he could have maintained such close ties to someone who was a hardcore Zionist and, if not an Israeli agent himself, certainly an asset whom Israeli intelligence used frequently. It’s baffling. A couple of years ago, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and wrote off his dismissal of Epstein’s predatory sexual behavior as similar to Nader’s stubborn refusal to endorse gay rights during the 2000 campaign, when there were several gay marriage/rights initiatives on state ballots, by saying, “I don’t do gonadal politics.” But this is much more appalling and inexplicable.

What was it about Epstein that could cloud Chomsky’s judgment? If it wasn’t the money and wasn’t the opportunity to rape young women? Look at Epstein’s writing: it’s scarcely literate. The sex-trafficker masquerading as a financial genius and consciousness guru was just not that smart and you’d think Noam, of all people, would be immune to intellectual seduction and flattery.

The last time I talked to Noam was a couple of years ago to beg for a blurb for our book An Orgy of Thieves, which he graciously delivered almost immediately. He still seemed to have all of his faculties, which, as we know, are more faculties than almost anyone else on the planet has ever had. So I don’t think you can blame it on dementia–maybe the new wife (always the first reaction when your hero stumbles)? But Valeria apparently only wanted Epstein to put them up in NYC and Noam said, “I fantasize about the Caribbean.” Read that how you will, but I prefer to believe Noam was thinking about Cuba.

The right, of course, is, as Doug Henwood pointed out, scurrilously trying to link this perplexing friendship to Chomsky’s politics, which is absurd. In fact, the relationship is a contradiction of nearly everything Chomsky has stood for over the last 60 years, which is why the revelations have proved so confounding for so many of us.

+ Several people have asked what Cockburn would have thought about Chomsky’s unsettling relationship with Epstein. It’s impossible to say, really. Alex and Noam were friends and Alex was intensely loyal to his friends. Given Cockburn’s writings on sex panics, I’d guess that he would have been more unnerved about Epstein’s role as a Zionist hardliner (and probable Israeli agent) than Noam’s bizarre dismissal of Epstein’s, by then widely-known, predilection for sex-trafficking and pedophilia. At the very least, Noam’s ties to Epstein were evidence of seriously bad judgment, intellectual and moral, from someone who usually made such considered and thoroughly reasoned decisions. At least that’s how it appears on this misty morning in the Oregon country….

COUNTERPUNCH 

Jupiter Maçã - AJ5

 

National Maritime Museum

 

Ainda está quente

FERNANDES 

 

 

 

MIGUEL PAIVA 

 

 

QUINHO

 

 

 

The Fish Cheer / I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To Die Rag - Country Joe and the Fish (in memoriam)

 And it's 1, 2, 3

What are we fighting for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn
Next stop is Vietnam
And it's 5, 6, 7
Open up the pearly gates
Ah, ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee!
We're all gonna die