Tweet of the Week

2. CNN International‏Verified account @cnni  May 7
   

   Harrowing drone footage shows the destruction and chaos of western Mosul, Iraq (WARNING: graphic content) http://cnn.it/2pJG2O2 

   20 replies182 retweets130 likes

   
   

   
   

From The TESR Test Kitchen

Campbell's, mmm-good?


Sometimes.


But not now.




The labels promise a Hulk soup and a Spider-Man soup.

What do they deliver?

Chicken noodle soup.

And check out the labels on the two cans and the label on a Cambell's chicken soup can and you'll find out that they are all the same.

What was the point?

Just call it chicken noodle soup and slap Hulk or Spider-Man or whomever on it.


Instead, they promise some form of new soup that just feels like a con.


(Spice up these soups -- and any chicken noodle soup -- with a dash of soy sauce and a dash of Tobasco sauce.)

This edition's playlist

1) Aimee Mann's MENTAL ILLNESS.

2) Alicia Keys' HERE.

3) Tori Amos' UNREPENTANT GERALDINES.

4) Janet Jackson's UNBREAKABLE.

5) Sam Smith's IN THE LONELY HOUR DROWNING SHADOW EDITION.

6) Aretha Franklin's ARETHA SINGS THE GREAT DIVA CLASSICS.



7) Ben Harper's CALL IT WHAT IT IS.

8)  Steve Grand's ALL AMERICAN BOY.

9) Nick Jonas' LAST YEAR WAS COMPLICATED.

10) Pretenders' ALONE.

Repost from Great Britain's SOCIALIST WORKER:

Josephine Baker biography celebrates the rebel behind the singer

by Gabby Thorpe

---

Josephine Baker is most recognisable to some in her iconic skirt of rubber bananas as the “first black star of the world stage”.

However, Catel and Boucquet’s graphic novel reveals Baker went beyond being just a singer.
US-born Baker arrived in Paris aged 19 in 1925.

Her fight against segregation and racism after the Second World War makes studying her life a must for activists who strive to do the same today.

The format of the graphic biography is accessible and interesting, especially for those who do not know much about Baker. Cartel and Bocquet have created a work that highlights her irreverence and independence.

It spans her often tragic childhood, her rise to fame, and her work with the French Resistance against the Nazi invasion of France and the Vichy regime.

The reader is invited to experience on some level her rousing speeches against segregation, and her “Rainbow Tribe”. They were a group of orphans she adopted, all of different backgrounds.

Although this biography doesn’t focus enough on Baker’s work as an activist, it is entertaining for those who want to find out more.

At times funny and poignant Josephine Baker is recommended to anyone who is interested in the fight against oppression.

There is much to learn from her devotion to struggle. It will serve as a reminder that we cannot transcend our oppressors, but must instead fight against them.

As a lover of socialist ideas, Baker would be pleased to know that her life has inspired future generations to take up the fight for liberation.

Josephine Baker by Catel Muller and Jose-Louis Bocquet, published by SelfMadeHero, £14.99. selfmadehero.com

---

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Published by Larkham Printers & Publishers Ltd, company registered in England & Wales, number: 1335756, registered address: 71-75 Shelton Street London WC2H 9JQ. Correspondence address: PO Box 71327, London SE11 9BW  

Green Party of Virginia Calls for Medicare for All

From the Green Party of the United States:

Green Party of Virginia Calls for Medicare for All

Corporate Parties Unable to Address the Crisis

Richmond, VA –  The Green Party of Virginia calls for a Medicare type healthcare system for all Americans. At a time when our legislators from the two corporate led parties have demonstrated the inability to adequately address the crisis before us, we call for a federally administered single-payer health care program. Universal single-payer health care means comprehensive coverage for all Americans as a right of citizenship.

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 5, 2017
Green Party of Virginia
www.vagreenparty.org
Contact
Tim Cotton, Press Secretary
press.gpva@gmail.com 540.219.3599

---

The U.S. spends more on health care per person, and as a percentage of gross domestic product, than any other advanced nation in the world, yet is extremely ineffective in providing adequate healthcare. Millions are not covered at all, most are inadequately covered or it is unaffordable, while businesses are being strangled by premiums. We need a system whereby Americans will be able to choose a health care provider without worrying about whether that provider is in-network and will be able to get the care they need without having to read any fine print or trying to figure out how they can afford the out-of-pocket costs.

Along with this we must stand up to drug companies and negotiate fair prices for the American people collectively. People are being held hostage by healthcare, and are mere pawn of the two parties. "We cannot continue to legislate healthcare for the benefit of corporations," said Co-Chair B. Sidney Smith. "People over profit must be the starting point in our search for solutions."

###

Aimee Mann answers why

Reposting Kat's review of Aimee Mann's new album.

Kat's Korner: Aimee Mann answers why

Kat: Why does Aimee Mann still make albums?

Following the three studio albums with the band 'Til Tuesday, she went solo and MENTAL ILLNESS is her ninth solo studio album. 

Her biggest hit, "Voices Carry," made the top ten in 1985.

The bulk of radio stations won't even consider playing her.

But here she is with another album.

From the start, it's been suggested that she needs to be 'produced' (Bob Clearmountain remixed "Voices Carry") -- meaning remixed.

Yet here she is with a basically acoustic album.

Why?

Does Aimee think this album will storm the charts and spend weeks at number one?

If so, she might have called it MY MENTAL ILLNESS.

My best guess?

Aimee can't help but follow her muse and will keep releasing albums for as long as the muse communes with her.


Which is lucky for those who seek her out.

MENTAL ILLNESS is the second best solo album of her career (THE FORGOTTEN ARM remains her finest).  And, in time, with more listens, it might even tie as her finest.




Boy, when you're through, you're through
Nobody argues the point like you
You never loved me
You never loved me

And hey, when you're right, you're right
We'll stipulate that I lost the fight
You never loved me
You never loved me

Three thousand miles to sit in a room
With a vanishing groom
Till it undoes me
A helium cell like a hermit crab shell
Was a blank, you could tell
It never was me
'Cause you will never love me



"You Never Loved Me" is one of the standout tracks, for me.


I enjoy "Goose Snow Cone" and "Patient Zero" but neither will break the album out.

They're strong songs.  They're wonderful, in fact.

But they aren't going to invite anyone to the party that wasn't already planning on coming.





"Good For Me" might have.


So it's good that Aimee's performing it live during various public radio appearances.







What a waste of a smoke machine
Took the taste of the dopamine
And left me high and dry

Call the cops, call the cavalry
Spin the tops that'll dazzle me
And give me a new supply

There's a layer below, underneath all the layers that I knew
So I pay when you go but it only convinces me that you are
Good for me
Good for

Just a little bit of what I need
To soothe an appetite that I can't feed
Isn't that good for me?



Aimee's made an amazing album -- one that will show up on many best-of-2017 lists.


But she's made it on her own terms which is the only way she works these days.

If you don't get that, here's what she told Jordan Runtagh (PEOPLE) last month:

People don't buy records anymore anyway, so it's even more freedom to just do whatever you want to do within the realm of being able to afford it. A little bit of that starts to feel like a vanity project. I just tried not to think about it. When does the falling revenue stream start to translate to a vanity project rather than a job? I don't know, it's weird. But it definitely frees you up to do whatever you feel like doing. If nobody's buying it, it doesn't matter. [. . .] As an artist you try not to, but at the end of the day I don't make records for other people, I make records for myself. I make the kind of record that I want to hear and I don't think, "What does an audience want?" and try to deliver that, because that's a fool's errand.



MENTAL ILLNESS is music for music's sake.


And with so much pre-programmed and copied fluff that attempts to cater, it's sorely needed.

Truest statement of the week

At this stage of his career, Obama must dedicate much of his time to the maintenance of Official Lies, since they are central to his own “legacy.” With the frenzied assistance of his first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, Obama launched a massive military offensive – a rush job to put the New American Century back on schedule. Pivoting to all corners of the planet, and with the general aim of isolating and intimidating Russia and China, the salient feature of Obama’s offensive was the naked deployment of Islamic jihadists as foot soldiers of U.S. imperialism in Libya and Syria. It is a strategy that is morally and politically indefensible -- unspeakable! -- the truth of which would shatter the prevailing order in the imperial heartland, itself.
Thus, from 2011 to when he left the White House for a Tahiti yachting vacation with music mogul David Geffen and assorted movie and media celebrities, Obama orchestrated what the late Saddam Hussein would have called “The Mother of All Lies”: that the U.S. was not locked in an alliance with al-Qaida and its terrorist offshoots in Syria, a relationship begun almost 40 years earlier in Afghanistan.
He had all the help he needed from a compliant corporate media, whose loyalty to U.S. foreign policy can always be counted on in times of war. Since the U.S. is constantly in a (self-proclaimed) state of war, corporate media collaboration is guaranteed. Outside the U.S. and European corporate media bubble, the whole world was aware that al Qaida and the U.S. were comrades in arms. (According to a 2015 poll, 82 percent of Syrians and 85 percent of Iraqis believe the U.S. created ISIS.) When Vladimir Putin told a session of the United Nations General Assembly that satellites showed lines of ISIS tankers stretching from captured Syrian oil fields “to the horizon,” bound for U.S.-allied Turkey, yet untouched by American bombers, the Obama administration had no retort. Russian jets destroyed 1,000 of the tankers, forcing the Americans to mount their own, smaller raids. But, the moment soon passed into the corporate media’s amnesia hole -- another fact that must be shed in order to avoid unspeakable conclusions.

-- Glen Ford, "Obama’s New Job: Guardian of Official Lies" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).

Truest statement of the week II

The American public does not want a book from Hillary Clinton. It wants an abject apology. And it wants it for free. She got what she deserved: She lost.

Now she needs to shut up and go home.

-- Gersh Kuntzman, "Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be writing a book — she should be drafting a long apology to America" (NEW YORK DAILY NEWS).