#and Dwight has 1000% earned it

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hunting-the-game · 2 years ago

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❤ (- what the heck. @glyphsinthefog too )

Heart eyes motherfucker-

Affectionate;

Sex;

Dates;

Would my character…

Marry them? Yes | No (Actively planning to? Not really. Willing to? Absolutely)

Have sex on the first date? Yes | No (they’d have to build up to it)

Confess their attraction first? Yes | No (too much of a coward)

Have children/adopt? Yes | No (thinks he’d be a bad parent)

Die for your character? Yes | No (as many times as necessary)

Cheat on your character? Yes | No

Lie to them? Yes | No

Cuddle after sex? Yes | No

#ask meme #Dwight #Jake ‘Knife’ Park is soft for ONE man #and Dwight has 1000% earned it

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cyarskj1899 · 2 years ago

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About time. I wished that her involvement in other cases were looked into. If she’s capable of covering up for a murderer let alone three murderers, then God knows what other cases she was corruptive

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Former DA In Ahmaud Arbery Case Finally Gets A Court Date

The long delay for Jackie Johnson shows how race and privilege helps some people avoid accountability.

Keith Reed

Published6 hours ago

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We may earn a commission from links on this page.

It’s been almost three years since Ahmaud Arbery was chased, trapped and gunned down by three bigots with ties to local law enforcement over the offense of jogging while Black. Those homicidal racists have since been tried, convicted and shipped off to prison, likely for the rest of their lives.

Watch

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But months after the last conviction for his actual murder, one person who played a pivotal role by using her elected office to help the killers initially evade accountability is just now starting the process of facing her own accountability. Jackie Johnson, who was district attorney for Georgia’s Brunswick Judicial Circuit when Arbery was killed, will finally be arraigned Dec. 29. She will have to face a judge and enter a plea to charges that she violated her oath of office and improperly interfered with the investigation of Arbery’s killing by instructing Gwynn County cops not to make an arrest in the case.

More from our network

Sent from my iPhone

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ecelebspy · 4 years ago

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Rainn Wilson Net Worth - Salary From The Office And Other Projects

Rainn Wilson first found fame playing Dwight Schrute in the NBC sitcom, The Office. He has gone on to play several other fan-favorite characters in movies and television shows, including House of 1000 Corpses, Six Feet Under, Mom, and Star Trek: Discovery. He has won many awards and also earned millions from his career. From his highly successful career in the film industry, the American actor has amassed a huge fortune. Rainn Wilson net worth is estimated to be $14 million, which also includes his earnings as a producer and writer.

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tas-ss7a · 6 years ago

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My grandpa in the Vietnam War (Tom Le 7A)

My grandfather is Le Dang Phung. He was born in 1944, a year before the second war between Vietnam and the France begun. He still lives with my family at the age of 75, giving me advice for my daily life and helping me with this god damm blog. My grandfather was just a hardworking citizen for the North like all the others, keeping their patriotism lit and burning in their heart after the harsh and tough days. While he was learning college and planning to go in the military, he met the love of his life, my grandma. They married and mated at the age of 23, bringing four beautiful babies to life (the third baby is my dad). Sadly, because of his limited time obsession with cigarettes, his organs started to develop lung cancer since the end of 2017. He stopped smoking then and still trying to stay healthy everyday (take notes Mr. Matt, don’t let this happen to you also).

The life in the North back then was very tough and intense, while the government system between the two sides just can’t conclude with one of the two to end the war. My grandfather quoted: “A grain of rice used to be divided into three. One was for yourself and your family. The other one was for the people in the South that is supporting the country in the other side, attacking from the inside in stealth. And the last one was for the country/government itself and the young soldier sacrificing their life for the country and the citizens within it”. The young soldiers would contribute their life for their dreams to come true, to liberate the North and unite the two land to the S of Vietnam. This was one way to bring to spirits for the citizens to work and donate for the government, knowing that their flaming patriotism would never turn off.

Vietnam was a feudal country since Jesus was born, or even before that. And during that age, the country didn’t develop after 1000 years slaved for China and another 100 years for the French. So as you can see, Vietnam wasn’t a very flourish or strong country from the start.

My grandfather tried to contribute his love for the country by helping the government during the war. He spent most of his time in the Contribute Area, waiting for his chance to donate his hours exchanging for peace. (The Contribute Area is like an area for the people that are ot strong enough to be in the military. But instead, if the government need its help in any way, then the Contribute People will strike and do their job) Every few months, the government might support some food for the citizens for their critical spirits. When that event occurred, my grandfather would earn less than half a pound of meat to share with his whole family. Even though he knew that it’s not enough, but he didn’t complain his efforts for the country and the people.

During the war, every single grain of rice was very rare and important. There were no fish, no meat, the wealthy might have salt, sugar and fish sauce to apply. Sometimes there would be unfortunate times that his family wouldn’t have food, then they had to eat things such as corns, sweet potatoes and cassavas. With no fertilization and dry land, it was hard to grow anything while bombs and bullets from the South would drop down from the sky like rain. As the range of the bombs expanded and the battlefield slowly dragged to the North, my grandfather’s family would need to retreat near the barriers of China and wait. These events looped for more than a decay until Ho Chi Minh ended the war in 1975.

After 31 years' woth living in pain, hunger and starvation. The war finally goes to an end and give his family a chance to live on. According to Kenny Ha in his Blog, “No matter what, war is not about the glorious win of a country over the other. But it’s the pain, the death and brutal things that the government created”. Maybe the efforts they wasted for the war wasn’t worth it, but I think the price to earn peace was too much. We’re lucky that our ancestors and others was there in the past to help us live happily and safety in the future. “Without them, there would be no us”. - Kenny Ha

Questions you make ask (making it for fun and creativity 🙂):

Why would China help the North during the war?

They’re also Communist such as Cambodia and Laos

If the South win, then they would be a new threat after defeating the North

2. Why would the US help the South during the war?

They’re also Capitalist

Cuz the presidents were nice (Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford)

They don’t like Communist, which is Vietnam in this case

Vietnam helped the US to eliminate Japan during WW2

3. Why did the Vietnam war occur?

After the strike of Ho Chi Minh (North) to kick the French away, China and the US gave Vietnam two years to conclude with one official government system. Communism (China) or Capitalism (the US)

After two years, the North and the South didn’t decide with the other side. So, the war occurred to decide instead

#vietnam wins u.s. approval to start flights

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blackkudos · 7 years ago

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Lois Mailou Jones

Lois Mailou Jones (November 3, 1905 – June 9, 1998) was an artist who painted and influenced others during the Harlem Renaissance and beyond, during her long teaching and artistic career. Jones was the only African-American female painter of the 1930s and 1940s to achieve fame abroad, and the earliest whose subjects extend beyond the realm of portraiture. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts and is buried on Martha's Vineyard in the Oak Bluffs Cemetery.

Early life and education

Her father, Thomas Vreeland Jones was a building superintendent who later became a lawyer after becoming the first African-American to earn a law degree from Suffolk Law School; her mother, Carolyn Jones was a cosmetologist.

Jones' parents encouraged her to draw and paint as a child in water color. During childhood her mother took her and her brother to Martha's Vineyard where she became lifelong friends with novelist Dorothy West. She attended the High School of Practical Arts in Boston. Meanwhile, she took Boston Museum of Fine Arts evening classes and worked as an apprentice in costume design. She held her first solo exhibition at the age of 17. From 1923 to 1927 she attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston studying design, taking night courses at the Boston Normal Art School. She also pursued graduate work at the Design Art School and Harvard University. She continued her education even after beginning work, attending classes at Columbia University and receiving her bachelor's degree from Howard University in 1945, graduating magna cum laude.

Work

In 1928 she was hired by Charlotte Hawkins Brown after some initial reservations, and founded the art department at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina. As a prep school teacher, she coached a basketball team, taught folk dancing, and played the piano for church services. Only one year later, she was recruited to join the art department at Howard University in Washington D.C., and remained as professor of design and watercolor painting until her retirement in 1977. While developing her own work as an artist, she was also known as an outstanding mentor.

In 1934 Jones met Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noel, who would become a prominent Haitian artist, while both were graduate students at Columbia University. They corresponded for almost twenty years before marrying in the south of France in 1953. Jones and her husband lived in Washington, D.C. and Haiti. They had no children. He died in 1982.

In the early 1930s Jones exhibited with the William E. Harmon Foundation and other institutions, produced plays and dramatic presentations and began study of masks from various cultures. In 1937 she received a fellowship to study in Paris at the Académie Julian. During one year's time she produced over 30 watercolors. She returned to Howard University and began teaching watercolor painting. She said of her time in Paris:

The French were so inspiring. The people would stand and watch me and say 'mademoiselle, you are so very talented. You are so wonderful.' In other words, the color of my skin didn't matter in Paris and that was one of the main reasons why I think I was encouraged and began to really think I was talented.

In 1938 she produced Les Fétiches (1938) a stunning, African inspired oil which is owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Jones' Les Fétiches was instrumental in transitioning 'Négritude'—a distinctly francophone artistic phenomenon—from the predominantly literary realm into the visual. Jones' work provided an important visual link to Négritude authors including Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas, and Léopold Sédar Senghor. It was one of her best known works, and her first piece which combined traditional African forms with Western techniques and materials to create a vibrant and compelling work. She also completed Parisian Beggar Womanwith text supplied by Langston Hughes.

Her main source of inspiration was Céline Marie Tabary, also a painter, whom she worked with for many years. Tabary submitted Jones' paintings for consideration for jury prizes since works by African-American artists were not always accepted. Jones traveled extensively with Tabary, including to the South of France, and they frequently painted each other. They taught art together in the 1940s.

In the 1940s and early 1950s Jones exhibited at the Phillips Collection, Seattle Museum of Art, National Academy of Design, the Barnet Aden Gallery, Pennsylvania's Lincoln University, Howard University, galleries in New York and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. In 1952 Loïs Mailou Jones: Peintures 1937-1951, a collection of more than 100 reproductions of her French paintings, was published.

In 1954 Jones was a guest professor at Centre D'Art and Foyer des Artes Plastiques in Port-au-Prince, Haiti where the government invited her to paint Haitian people and landscapes. Her work became energized by the bright colors. She and her husband returned there during summers for the next several years, in addition to trips to France. There she completed "Peasant girl, Haiti" and also exhibited her work. In 1955 she unveiled portraits of the Haitian president and his wife commissioned by United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Jones's numerous oils and watercolors inspired by Haiti are probably her most widely known works. In them her affinity for bright colors, her personal understanding of Cubism's basic principles, and her search for a distinctly style reached an apogee. In many of her pieces one can see the influence of the Haitian culture, with its African influences, which reinvigorated the way she looked at the world. These include Ode to Kinshasa and Ubi Girl from Tai. Her work became more abstract and hard-edged, after her marriage to Pierre-Noel. Her impressionist techniques gave way to a spirited, richly patterned, and brilliantly colored style.

In 1962 she initiated Howard University's first art student tour of France, including study at Académie de la Grande Chaumière and guided several more tours over the years. In the 1960s she exhibited at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Cornell University, and galleries in France, New York and Washington, D.C.

In 1968 she documented work and interviews of contemporary Haitian artists for Howard University's "The Black Visual Arts" research grant. And continued the project in 1969 and 1970, traveling to eleven African countries. Her report Contemporary African Art was published in 1970 and in 1971 she delivered 1000 slides and other materials to the University as fulfillment of the project. In 1973-74 she researched "Women artists of the Caribbean and Afro-American Artists."

Her research inspired Jones to synthesize a body of designs and motifs that she combined in large, complex compositions. Jones's return to African themes in her work of the past several decades coincided with the black expressionistic movement in the United States during the 1960s. Skillfully integrating aspects of African masks, figures, and textiles into her vibrant paintings, Jones continued to produce exciting new works at an astonishing rate of speed, even in her late eighties. In her nineties, Jones still painted. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton collected one of her island seascapes Breezy Day at Gay Head while they were in the White House.

Jones felt that her greatest contribution to the art world was "proof of the talent of black artists." The African-American artist is important in the history of art and I have demonstrated it by working and painting here and all over the world." But her fondest wish was to be known as an "artist"—without labels like black artist, or woman artist. She has produced work that echoes her pride in her African roots and American ancestry.

Lois Mailou Jones' work is in museums all over the world and valued by collectors. Her paintings grace the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Portrait Gallery, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the National Palace in Haiti, the National Museum of Afro-American Artists and many others.

Awards and honors

Robert Woods Bliss Award for Landscape for Indian Shops Gay Head, Massachusetts(1941)

Atlanta University award for watercolor painting Old House Near Frederick, Virginia (1942)

Women of 1946 award from the National Council of Negro Women (1946)

John Hope Prize for Landscape for Ville d'Houdain, Pas-de-Calais and award from the Corcoran Gallery of Art for Petite Ville en hautes-Pyrenées (1949)

Atlanta University award for Impasse de l'Oratorie, Grasse, France (1952)

Chevalier of the National Order of Honor and Merit from the government of Haiti. (1954)

Award for design of publication Voici Hätii (1958)

Atlanta University award for Voodoo Worshippers, Haiti and America's National Museum of Art award for Fishing Smacks, Menemsha, Massachusetts (1960)

Elected Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts in London; receives Franz Bader Award for Oil Painting from National Museum of Art for Peasants on Parade (1962)

Howard University Fine Arts Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching (1975)

Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Suffolk University in Boston. She also has received honorary degrees from Colorado State Christian University, Massachusetts College of Art

Honored by President Jimmy Carter at the White House for outstanding achievements in the arts (1980).

Candace Award, Arts and Letters, National Coalition of 100 Black Women (1982)

Legacy

After her death, her friend and adviser, Dr. Chris Chapman completed a book about her life and the African-American pioneers she had worked with and been friends with, including Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Alain Locke, Dorothy West, Josephine Baker, and Matthew Henson. Entitled Lois Mailou Jones: A life in color, it is available through Xlibris and museum stores.

In 1997, Jones' paintings were featured in an exhibition entitled Paris, the City of Light that appeared at several museums throughout the country including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Studio Museum of Harlem. The exhibition also featured the works of Barbara Chase-Riboud, Edward Clark, Harold Cousins, Beauford Delaney, Herbert Gentry, and Larry Potter. The exhibition examined the importance of Paris as an artistic mecca for African-American artists during the 20 years that followed World War II.

From November 14, 2009, to February 29, 2010, a retrospective exhibit of her work entitled Lois Mailou Jones: A life in vibrant colorwas held at the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina. The traveling exhibit included 70 paintings showcasing her various styles and experiences: America, France, Haiti, and Africa.

Wikipedia

#Lois Mailou Jones #11-03 #06-09

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bfparker-blog · 7 years ago

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“Solving USA and the World’s Major Problems For A Better Future.”

Book Review, June 19, 2017, Franklin and Betty Parker. Title: “Solving USA and the World’s Major Problems For A Better Future,” 10-11 AM, Adshead Hall, Uplands Village, Pleasant Hill, TN 38578. E-mail: [email protected]

Betty: Our book review, “Solving USA’s and the World’s Major Problems For A Better Future” was started before and revised during and after the contentious Nov. 8, 2016 election.

Frank: We searched the internet, libraries, and elsewhere for best sources on such USA/World problems as: 1-stopping ongoing wars; 2-creating a more peaceful, cooperative world; 3-upliftlng needy people everywhere; and 4-finding ways toward a better future.

Betty: Frank, what concerns caused us to pursue this difficult topic on 1-what’s wrong with the USA and the world? and 2-How to correct those wrongs for a better future?

Frank: I am 96, Betty is 88. Our old age concerns and questions are: 1: why the USA, since World War 2, has been involved in ongoing, costly, deadly wars? 2: What did we do wrong to bring on our big troubles? 3: How can we correct past wrongs, mistakes, and move toward a better future?

Betty: Frank, any other really big problems to explore?

Frank: The deadly problem of violent Jihadist attacks. Jihad in Arabic means “struggle,” struggle to defend the Muslim faith against unbelievers. Some Muslims, long defensive about their faith, have in recent troubled times become violently anti-Western. We need to understand why Islamic jihadists are determined to destroy us and our Allies, and how to soften their angers.

Betty: Reasons for Middle East angers against us include 1: We needed Middle East oil and got it by hook or crook. 2: In so doing we Westerners generally ignored their history, cultures, faiths, and traditions.

Frank: 3: Muslims, whose main enemy is Israel, long resented, now hate, our USA backing of Israel since its 1948 founding. 4. Arabs, proud of their once great Arabic culture, feel threatened and besieged by the modern world. Muslims see us Americans as the worst of the modern world. Militant Islamists magnify our faults. They imagine that everything we do is against them.

Betty: Some young anti-West jihadists actually believe that either the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or Israel's secret agency Mossad on 9-11-2001 deliberately destroyed New York City’s World Trade Center in order to justify USA attacks on Muslims. Frank, these hard Islamist-USA differences nearly exploded on April 4, 2017, when Syria’s Pres. Bashar Hafez al-Assad (his name means “lion” in Arabic) used deadly poison gas on his own Syrian opponents.

Frank: Pres. Trump’s immediate response to this poison gas atrocity was to order 59 Tomahawk Missiles fired on Syria’s main military airport. His action won immediate U.S. praise--but wait--here’s what happened: those U.S. missiles struck close to stored Russian planes, prompting Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to denounce our missile strike as a provocative act.

Betty: Recently North Korea has been tested missiles to show the world that they will soon be able to pulverize us.

Frank: Such dangerous incidents can spin out of control; can lead to WW 3, to mutual nuclear bomb exchanges, to annihilation. Another big problem: Why does the USA use pilotless drones to kill targeted enemies?

Betty: Why do we use bombs and drone strikes knowing they also cause innocent civilian deaths and injuries? Our drone strikes increase their anger and make their blowback attacks on us fiercer, more vicious.

Frank: “Blowback” is a term first used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to explain retaliation in its deeper, hidden, more sinister meaning, as follows: the USA military has reason to suspect, then verifies, then bombs a jihadist site, expecting jihadists’ retaliation, so that USA military can hit them again with a superior force. This causes jihadists to use stronger retaliation, followed by even bigger USA bombing. That’s the heart, the awesomeness, and the evil of our ongoing wars: jihadists hit us, we hit back harder, knowing they will retaliate more fiercely. Blow by bigger blow escalates without end.

Betty: Also disturbing about our blowback strikes is their secrecy. The American public is not informed when the US uses drone strikes.

Frank: Journalists imbedded with our military have rightly described blowback strikes as perpetuating ongoing endless wars. What is behind our never-ending wars is profit and power. Endless wars push Congress to give the military more and more money, more and more power, which profits munitions makers, which enriches our 1% top rich because they own stock in defense industries.

Betty: Many Americans are not aware that our ongoing wars cost trillions of dollars, lead to many deaths and injuries and create homeless refugees. Those trillions of dollars could, should, be spent to uplift needy people everywhere, eliminate diseases, repair faulty infrastructures, plus other similar needs.

Frank: Better to use those trillions of dollars to help modernize poverty-stricken nations, improve and universalize education at all levels, create self-help programs everywhere, encourage peaceful negotiation, solve international disputes--tasks needed to assure our better future. Instead we use trillions of dollars to kill, kill, kill; to dominate.

Betty: We share below author John W. Whitehead’s criticism of our tremendous military overspending. He is a constitutional lawyer and human rights attorney.

Frank: Whitehead’s book is titled Battlefield America; The War on the American People, 2017. Interestingly, Whitehead’s main points were published in our newspaper, Crossville Chronicle (April 14, 2017, p. 4), titled: “Beware the Dogs of War.”

Betty: Whitehead wrote #1: Our gigantic military spending is ruining the USA. Our endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, instead of making the world and us safer are digging the USA deeper into trillions of dollars of debt.

Frank: Whitehead wrote #2: Our government has spent 4.8 trillion dollars on wars abroad since September 11, 2001, when jihadists hijacked USA planes, crashed them into New York City’s World Trade Center, into Washington, D.C.’s Pentagon Building, and crashed another in Pennsylvania as passengers fought off hijackers.

Betty: Whitehead, #3: Although the USA has only 5% of the world’s population, our military spending is almost half the world’s total military expenditure. We spend more on our military than do the 19 next biggest military spending nations combined.

Frank: Whitehead, #4: The Pentagon spends more on ongoing wars than all of our 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Our country is now (2017) 19 trillion dollars in debt.

Betty: Whitehead, #5: Everybody’s taxes pay for USA’s rising military costs. The 1% top rich get richer from ongoing wars because they own the most shares in the armaments industry.

Frank: Whitehead, #6: Interestingly, USA taxpayer statistics for 2013 reveal that some 243 million USA adults paid some type of federal taxes. About 122 million Americans paid federal income taxes. All American workers have payroll taxes. Result: low to moderate USA earners pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes than do high earning Americans. Ftnt https://www.reference.com/government-politics/many-u-s-taxpayers-d77a9265390f4bdb#

Betty: Whitehead, #7: asked: who is stealing the USA blind and pushing us to bankruptcy? Not the sick, elderly, or poor—but the military-industrial complex--the illicit merger of the armaments industry and the Pentagon as President Dwight Eisenhower 56 years ago warned in his 1961 farewell address.

Frank: Whitehead, #8: added this strong statement: The military-industrial complex, by influencing and controlling Congress plus controlling other sources of USA power, is perhaps the greatest threat to our country’s future.

Betty: Whitehead, #9, asked: what and who are behind USA’s expanding military empire? His answer: corrupt politicians, incompetent government officials, co-opted by greedy defense contractors. By approving and fostering America’s expanding military empire, they are bleeding the USA dry at a rate of more than 15 billion dollars a month or 20 million dollars an hour.

Frank: Whitehead, #10: That USA expenditure of over 15 billion dollars a month; 20 million dollars an hour is spent on foreign wars alone. That sum for foreign wars alone does not include the added cost of staffing and maintaining our 1000-plus U.S.A. military bases worldwide.

Betty: Another author, Jane Mayer, M A Y E R, confirms Whitehead’s assertions about USA enormous military spending. Her book is titled: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, published in 2016. Ftnote: NY: Doubleday.

Frank: Jane Mayer wrote, #1: reinforcing Whitehead, that USA military trillions of dollars are paid mainly by the non-rich 99% taxpayers, not by the 1% rich taxpayers.

Betty: Jane Mayer wrote, #2: Most Americans don’t know, don’t realize, the above two facts: that lower income Americans pay for our ongoing wars, which benefit the super rich and do not know that our ongoing wars against Muslim nations create the radical jihadists who are determined to destroy us.

Frank: We would rebel, rebel--if all Americans knew the above two facts, if we all knew the high costs of ongoing wars, if we all knew the horrors of military and civilian lives lost and crippled, if we knew the hurt and sadness suffered by involved families-we would rebel.

Betty: We would rebel by voting out misguided politicians, voting in reform minded honor-bound, enlightened government officials.

Frank: We would rebel by electing officials who care for all their constituents, especially their needy ones, and care for all people everywhere.

Betty: We need to elect leaders dedicated to honest uplift and advancement of all their constituents, poor, rich, regardless of color or national background.

Frank: Now for one favorite author Chalmers Johnson who died in 2010, one of the early respected critics of USA’s military excesses, a scholar and professor at the University of California’s Berkeley and San Diego campuses. He first exposed the USA military blowback scheme that propels our ongoing wars.

Betty: Chalmers Johnson, #1: Johnson, an early Cold War anti-USSR scholar-writer and for a time a CIA advisor, soon saw and wrote convincingly that our ongoing wars as Policeman of the World were changing the USA from a Democracy into an Oligarchy ruled by the richest few.

Frank: Chalmers Johnson, #2: His best known 3-volume Blowback series covers the USA’s World War 2 defeat of Hitler and Hitlerism, covers aggressive USSR expansionism which determined the USA to become the World’s Policeman.

Betty: Chalmers Johnson, #3: He continued: With the 1991 collapse of the USSR, the USA, instead of disarming, strengthened itself as Super World Policeman. In doing so we began losing our highly regarded Democracy. We became more and more an Oligarchy ruled by the monied rich top 1%. FTNT: https://www.thenation.com/authors/chalmers-johnson

Frank: Chalmers Johnson, #4: Titles of his 3 Blowback series are: 1- title: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, published 2000. 2-title: Sorrows of Empire published 2004. 3-title: Nemesis: The Last Days of American Empire, published 2006. His last book of essays was titled: Dismantling The Empire: America’s Last Best Hope, published 2010, the year he died.

Betty: Chalmers Johnson, #5: His Blowback series documented that the CIA plus a dozen or more other US intelligence agencies operate in secret without accounting for monies spent. Chalmers Johnson first told about the Defense Department’s growing number of military bases worldwide--737 in his time, grown to over 1,000 by 2017.

Frank: Chalmers Johnson, #6: He was one of the first scholars to say that our enforcement of American dominance over the world constitutes a new form of USA global empire.

Betty: Chalmers Johnson, #7: Past empires, he wrote, controlled subject peoples as colonies. But since World War II our many military bases around the world have made the USA a new World Empire, an empire evoking resistance, antagonism, and Islamist terror attacks wherever they think they can hurt us most. Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback series warned that being an Empire causes rebellion, strife, and war with those we would rule. He urged again and again for dismantling our empire.

Frank: Chalmers Johnson, #8: wrote descriptively of military prisons using such cruel practices as brutal waterboarding torture of prisoners and worse. These atrocities done secretly in Iraq and at our Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison have since been made public.

Betty: Chalmers Johnson, #9: Outwardly, military men and women on bases abroad, single or married, have assigned rigid military duties, yet many live in luxury, in opulence: low rent or no rent, cheap goods in Post Exchanges( PXes), many recreation outlets.

Frank: Sins hidden from us on our 1,000+military bases worldwide include: swaggering drunken soldiers who brawl, injure, kill native people, rape women; sins which, even if reported, are covered up.

Betty: Our military bases abroad are imperial enclaves, a form of colonization, barely tolerated by the host country for financial and political reasons, deeply resented by the country’s citizens, utterly detested by resentful jihadists. That’s what ongoing wars do. They are brutal and brutalizing.

Frank: Another special best author, Betty’s favorite, is Rosa Brooks. Her book is on the US military, the Pentagon, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It is titled: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything, 2016, listed among the best 100 books published that year.

Betty: Brooks grew up in a liberal activist family. Her mother, Barbara Ehrenreich, is a well-known journalist (NY Times; New Yorker) and an award-winning author of 21 books (Nickel and Dimed).

Frank: Rosa Brooks became a lawyer, a legal scholar, and a human rights activist.

Betty: She then worked for 26 months (2009-2012) in the Pentagon as chief legal research advisor to the highest-ranking woman officer in the Pentagon, with top security clearance. Rosa Brooks married a highly placed Pentagon officer.

Frank: She is currently a professor of constitutional and international law and also Associate Dean at Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., and a prominent writer for major journals.

Betty: She is keenly insightful about USA military strengths and weaknesses.

Frank: Brooks, #1 wrote: “Today, America’s wars are everywhere and forever. Our enemies change constantly and rarely wear uniforms, and virtually anything can become a weapon…“

Betty: Brooks, #2: She shows how U.S. defense policies evolved during the long USA-USSR Cold War, 1945-91, 45 years. Then in 1991 the USSR fell apart, the Cold War ended, and the world dramatically changed.

Frank: Brooks, #3: Since 1991, our enemies are not nation states but are Mid-East Muslim jihadists who hate the West.

Betty: Wars are no longer declared. Enemies rely on shock and terrorism.

Frank: Meanwhile, we still support the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), our western nations organization to counter Russian aggression, and other defense agreements created for a Cold War with the USSR that no longer exists.

Betty: Brooks, #4: Her urgent warning is that constant wars destroy America’s founding values, laws, and institutions. On-going wars undermine the international rules and organizations that keep our world from sliding into chaos.

Frank: The world around us, she continued, is quietly changing beyond recognition—and time is running out to make things right. While military costs continue to rise higher and higher, USA domestic needs continue to have lower and lower priority.

Betty: Those higher and higher military costs are for endless wars with mostly Mid-Eastern Muslim and with north African countries whose jihadists hate our USA military presence and exploitation.

Frank: Brooks, #5: She re-emphasizes that it is suicidal for us to forget President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address warning against what is now the commanding threat:--the military-industrial complex.

Betty: Brooks, #6: reminds us that President John F. Kennedy, three months after his inauguration, on the CIA’s urging, naively approved the disastrously failed CIA-directed attempt to overthrow Cuba’s Pres. Fidel Castro.

Frank: Though the CIA invasion was planned under Pres. Eisenhower, JFK accepted full responsibility for this failure.

Betty: But JFK never again trusted the CIA and signed an executive order prohibiting the CIA from more such secret operations.

Frank: Brooks, #7: stated that conspiracy theories about JFK’s assassination blame his assassination on an embittered CIA that hated JFK for threatening to “Smash the CIA to smithereens” (his words).

Betty: Yet after Kennedy’s death and throughout the Cold War years, CIA’s secrecy, spending, and power grew, mushroomed.

Frank: The CIA has spent vast sums in Southeast Asia, in Iran, in Afghanistan, and in Central and South America. The CIA is much like a secret army with a secret budget.

Betty: Brooks, #8: asked, “Where is the hope in this dangerous world?” What is the answer?

Frank: Brooks, being a specialist in international law, believes the U.S. still has time to help create an international system of checks and balance that can save us. We need, she wrote, to develop cautions and processes that make life in this dangerous world safer, better. (FTNT RBrooks, p. 355)

Betty: Brooks, #9: “We will need to do this on…the individual, state, and international levels…and balance the right of each individual to life, liberty, and fair process…” “With regard to the nation, we need categories, rules, and institutions that enable meaningful democratic control of government decisions that affect [our] liberty and lives.” FTNTP. Brooks, p. 356.

Frank: Brooks, #10: then remarkably urged that we remake our war Army into a peace Army, a new kind of John F. Kennedy Peace Corps. Brooks asked: “…why not use this as an opportunity to engage everyone—to include millions more Americans in the project of making the nation stronger, and the world a little less cruel?”

Betty: Brooks, #11: continued: “Imagine a revamped public sector premised on the idea of universal service—an America in which every young man and woman spends a year or two engaged in work that fosters national and global security…some might work on international development or public health projects.” “A universal service program would also be a massive investment in a safer, stronger future” FTNT Brooks, page 360.

Frank: Brooks concluded, #12: on the hopeful note that though the USA and the World are in dangerously troubled times, we should, like our founding fathers, never abandon hope.

Betty: Brooks’ superior coverage of USA military problems is a good place to give my closing thoughts. ¶Martin Luther King, Jr., having battled for African American rights, the night before his death said: “I have been to the mountaintop and seen the Promised Land.” We do not live on a mountaintop. We live on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. We here have not seen the Promised Land.

Betty: Instead, we see inadequate health care and many other needs, knowing that around the world the lavishly expensive American military presence produces hatred, not peace, and that the costs of wars are taking money that could provide our neighbors with adequate health care, provide other needs, and assure a better future. Rosa Brooks in concluding her book says: “We don’t have to accept a world in which the globe is a battlefield… We should be asking…What kind of world do we want to live in—and how do we get from here to there?”

Betty: Now for Frank’s conclusion.

Frank: This USA/World problems and solutions topic has been for us a challenge and an eye opener. Our USA/World problems are many and complex; the solution few and difficult. We appreciate our audience’s patience. Your comments and reactions after my conclusion will be welcomed. I have asked Betty to alternate with me.

Betty for Frank: Having explored major USA/World problems, their origins and scope, Frank briefly sketches our USA’s growth from small beginnings to our high boom time rise, to our recent troubled discontents about 1- jobs lost to cheaper labor abroad, 2- ongoing wars, 3-our role as the hated world policeman, 4-many U.S. military bases and military spending, 5. our drift from Democracy to Oligarchy.

Frank: Despite its troubles our USA is wonderful, but no utopia. We’ve tried utopias--near perfect, cooperative societies; some religious, some secular: Shakers, Mennonites (some around Crossville, TN), New Harmony, Ind.; Brook Farm in Mass.; Rugby in TN; Oneida in New York State known for its silverware; Mormons in Utah. But these utopias did not last, never became mainstream.

Betty: Our USA has lasted and we hope will last for better or worse, despite many challenges. Frank, describe your view of our past, present, and likely future of the USA and the World.

Frank: Look back to Philadelphia, Penn., around 1776--a handful of smart/bold rebels from 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain; bound themselves together in Articles of Confederation, formed a new nation, wrote a Constitution, created a congress to make laws, a president to lead, a supreme court to decide, a government to cover every contingency. Why? So that free and independent people might live in harmony to shape their own changing future by free, prudent, competitive, informed, honest voting.

Betty, speaking for Frank: Those new Americans from 13 colonies were wise, substantive men of property who knew they had to compromise to accommodate colonies big and small, with immigrants from far and wide

Frank: Each was different, each with varied jobs and incomes-- few rich; mostly hard working, aspiring small farmers, small shopkeepers. Those founding fathers and their successor leaders, in keeping with the mores of their time, warily accepted as inevitable the need of Southern growers of cotton and other crops for cheap African slaves. It was wrong. We endured a civil war to right that wrong, and it gave us Abraham Lincoln.

Betty speaking for Frank: We welcomed indentured servants from mother England who would in time earn full citizenship; admitted low cost Chinese laborers to help lay iron track for railroads; opened wide liberty doors to massive poor immigrants needed for Northeast manufacturing and trade, encouraged the adventurous to fill the unfilled west to the Pacific Ocean.

Frank: What followed? How did America change? How did we get into our time of trouble? How did we rise so high and then, recently, fall so low? Listen to insights about our rise and fall from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, Social Science Professor Robert J. Gordon. His book is titled: The Rise and Fall of American Growth; The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Betty for Frank: Robert J. Gordon wrote that in our first hundred years, about 1776 to 1876, we had small population growth, small economic rise, and endured a divisive Civil War. The next hundred years, roughly 1876 to 1976, our country mushroomed phenomenally with massive population growth, more and greater inventions, plentiful jobs, despite of and in consequence of World Wars 1 and 2.

Frank; That 1876-1976 boom was spectacular. Living conditions changed beyond recognition for nearly every American. Electric lights replaced candles and whale oil; indoor flush toilets replaced outhouses; national highways replaced country roads; electric lights replaced oil-lit, then gas-lit homes, Electric washers replaced porch-based scrub boards, gasoline-driven cars replaced horses and horse driven carriages, steam and electric trains, new phones, ever new electronic gadgets. New York City’s financial district, a muddy street in the 1880s, boomed as Wall Street. We became the world’s financial center.

Betty speaking for Frank: We became the world’s leading democracy. But that once in our national lifetime 1876 to 1976 boom could not, did not last. USA job losses worried us.

Frank: Life for many blue collar Americans went downhill. USA manufacturing lost jobs to cheap labor abroad. Coal use dropped, replaced by lower priced natural gas and other lower polluting energy sources. USA shoppers bought cheaper made goods abroad rather than USA made goods. Result: USA job loses, job loses, job loses. The military-industrial complex then mired us down in ongoing unwinnable wars in Vietnam and elsewhere. It was the downward bust after the uplift boom plus ongoing wars that created our current USA and World unsolvable problems which we earlier highlighted.

Betty Speaking for Frank: In the November 8, 2016 presidential election angry hard working Americans who lost jobs voted for a change agent, a conservative real estate billionaire who repeatedly tweeted: I will make America great again. What’s ahead, Frank; will our future be better or worse?

Frank: Nuclear war, if it comes, will take survivors 100 or more years to rebuild a broken world. We must avoid such carnage, must create Brooks’ suggested Peace Army to uplift the fallen, to heal the world, to spread life-long learning to all people young and old, emphasizing goodness, honor, nobility, truth, and helpfulness. Each one teach one lifelong must become universally ingrained.

Betty For Frank: We humans have damaged, fouled, our God-given earth, air, rivers, oceans with garbage and harmful carbon smoke. We’ve learned to live with it but we have possibly doomed life on earth for future generations. We unwisely brought on our big floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, foul air resulting in mounting illnesses and early deaths.

Frank: In a hundred years we may be forced to leave our beloved but human-fouled Earth writes our one of the great living scientist, Cambridge University professor Stephen Hawking, himself immobile, speechless, wheel chair bound with Lou Gehrig’s disease, communicating only with a twitch near his right eye. He believes the future of our children’s children’ future is up there, up in space. Hawking believes, future generations must go up there, up there, to adapt to livable conditions, perhaps to find more advanced forms of life, to learn if those on other planets had the equivalent of Moses or Mohammad or Jesus.

In ending, I say: let us all on this Earth do the best we can to save a life, to save the world. Bless all in this house. Thank you. Thank you, projectionist Phil Nevius. Thank you, Book Review hosts Don and Mary Schantz. Thank you, audience. It’s your opinion & question time. END.

Note: Besides the books cited above, we searched many aspects of this topic at google.com plus other search engines, including http://teachthought.com/learning/100-search-engines-for-academic-research/

Contact: bfparker@ frontiernet.net

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