AP reports, "Paul
Reubens, the actor and comedian whose Pee-wee Herman character became a
cultural phenomenon through films and TV shows, has died."
That hurts. Really hurts. PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE is one of my all
time favorite films. Tim Burton directed it. It's where I first saw
Pee Wee Herman. I can quote that film endlessly. Including all of Jan
Hooks' lines when she provides the tour of The Alamo.
And I love it when he has the exchange with Francis where he says, "I love that story."
Pee-Wee: I wouldn't sell my bike for all the money in the world. Not for a hundred million, trillion, billion dollars.
Francis: Then you're crazy!
Pee-Wee: I know you are but what am I?
Francis: You're a nerd.
Pee-Wee: I know you are but what am I?
Francis: You're an idiot.
Pee-Wee: I know you are but what am I?
Pee-Wee
and Francis at the same time: I know you are but what am I? I know you
are but what am I? I know you are but what am I?
Pee-Wee: Infinity!
Francis: No, I'm not.
Pee-Wee and Francis together: You are! No way! Knock it off! Cut it out!
Francis: Shut up, Pee-Wee!
Pee-Wee: Why don't you make me?
Francis: Why don't you make me?
Pee-Wee: Because I don't make monkeys, I just train 'em.
Francis: Pee-Wee, listen to reason.
Francis: Come on!
Pee-Wee: Shh, I'm listening to reason.
Francis: Pee-Wee!
Pee-Wee: That's my name, don't wear it out.
Francis:
Remember the first time I saw your bike? You came riding past my house
and I came running out to tell you how much I liked it even way back
then.
Pee-Wee: I love that story.
And
I love Pee-Wee. Francis hires a man to steal the bike. Pee-Wee has to
go looking for it (Francis unloads it because the heat is on). He ends
up in Texas where he talks to Miss Simone about her "big but." He sees
The Alamo. He dances in a bar. He finds his bike on a Hollywood set.
The guy who played Wayne on WONDER YEARS is an actor who's being given
the bike by nuns. Pee-Wee steals it back. They make a film about the
whole thing with James Brolin playing "PW" (Pee-Wee) and Morgan
Fairchild playing his girlfriend Dottie.
It's perfection.
I
never saw BIG TOP PEE-WEE because Tim Burton didn't direct it. A lot
of people I knew were disappointed in it and I always pinned that off on
the fact that Tim Burton didn't return to direct. The next time I saw
Paul Reubens was when I saw BATMAN RETURNS. He did a lot of small
roles. But, in 2016, he returned to Pee-Wee in PEE-WEE'S BIG HOLIDAY.
Loved that movie. It's on NETFLIX and I've probably watched it more
than any other film on NETFLIX.
Joe Manganiello is his main co-star and they've got great chemistry.
Besides
film, Paul also did TV. PEE-WEE'S PLAYHOUSE was a great show. He also
did guest spots on MORK & MINDY, THE BLINDLIST, 30 ROCK, BOB'S
BUGERS, AMERICAN DAD, 227, Shelley Duvall's FAERIE TALE THEATER, and
many more. He was a bad guy on MURPHY BROWN and was nominated for an
Emmy for his work on that show as the network president's nephew who,
for one episode (he did six), is actually a good secretary for Murphy
(Murphy was infamous for her turnover in secretaries).
Paul was very talented. And I loved Pee-Wee. How could you not?
Monday, July 31, 2023. Antony Blinken speaks of Julian Assange and gets
pushback for his lies, a US convoy comes under attack in Iraq, the
United Nations is concerned by at least one of Turkey's attacks on Iraq,
creeps target libraries in the US, and much more.
Starting with the ongoing persecution of Julian Assange. REPUBLIC WORLD reports, "In a meeting focused on military cooperation in Brisbane, the US
Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, pushed back against the Australian
government's calls to end the pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange. Blinken insisted that Assange is alleged to have "risked very
serious harm to our national security" through his actions."
Julian is being persecuted for the 'crime' of
journalism. Julian Assange remains imprisoned and remains persecuted by
US President Joe
Biden who, as vice president, once called him "a high tech terrorist."
Julian's 'crime' was revealing the
realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the
information to Julian. WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs.
And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own.
For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War
Logs. Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the
Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the
whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident
US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have
leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters
and civilian killings in the Afghan war. The new logs detail how: •
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse,
torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct
appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a
notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after
they tried to surrender. • More than 15,000 civilians died in
previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no
official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081
non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical
evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or
ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric
shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent deat
The Biden administration
has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and
vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal
assaults under Donald Trump.
The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.
But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States
under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used
before for publishing classified information.
Whether the US justice department continues to
pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group
put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics
before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether
the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to
protect the press.
Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.
To be specific, his statement at the weekend
that Julian Assange’s actions in publishing US cables and defence
material “risk[ed] very serious harm to our national security” is a
clear, indeed blatant, lie.
Let’s
cite the authorities who over the years have confirmed that WikiLeaks’
publication of the Chelsea Manning material, including the Iraq and
Afghan war logs, did little or no harm to national security:
Barack Obama’s defence secretary at the time of the releases, Robert M Gates:
“I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy
described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think — I think
those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is,
governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest,
not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because
they believe we can keep secrets … Other nations will continue to deal
with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share
sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it
awkward? Yes. Consequences for US foreign policy? I think fairly
modest”;
The US Department of Defense in a secret report obtained by Buzzfeed in
2017: no “significant impact”; “disclosure of the Iraq data set will
have no direct personal impact on current and former US leadership in
Iraq”;
Officials of Blinken’s department briefing Congress in 2010: “We were told [the impact of WikiLeaks revelations] was embarrassing but not damaging”;
US military officials at the trial of Chelsea Manning:
“I don’t have a specific example,” when asked to confirm the
much-vaunted claim that the releases had placed the lives of US sources
in danger.
Blinken
knows all this. He worked as an adviser to Joe Biden when the latter
was vice president under Obama. Yet he continues to peddle the lie that
the Manning material damaged national security.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has denied several
times this lie, as Assange neither did espionage activities, violated
laws, nor any of the 18 charges by the US government.
The Mexican leader insisted that the major problem is that Assange
told the truth about what really happened in Iraq and other places,
uncovered corruption and violation of rights and laws in the United
States, so that´s why they want to silence him and punish him for using
his right to freedom of speech.
Blinken was in Australia over the weekend. Why? Oh, that's why the Australian government won't stand up to the US government, there's a deal involved:
The move is expected to strengthen a central Australian Defence Force
framework – Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) – which
underpins fundamental assets of the nation’s military including
manufacturing, storage and distribution, disposal, and research and
development.
By signing the monumental agreement, Australia will
be able to both carve its place as a major player in weapons export and
also grow domestic stockpiles through on-shore production.
The deal was finalised in a bilateral meet between Defence Minister Richard Marles and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday.
That's why Australia won't stand up and demand that Julian be released, a weapons deal is more important to them.
If
only there were an Australian blogger who was outrage by what is being
done to Julian and who could blog to hold Australia accountable . . .
If there is one, they're unknown in the US. All that captures our
attention or little cry babies who can't call out their own government.
Turkey renewed its air strikes on PKK positions in northern Iraq on Sunday.
Issuing a statement, the Turkish Ministry of Defense declared that PKK positions were targeted during these airstrikes.
News sources also announced that 2 terrorists were killed in the attacks.
Turkish ministry's statement also said that the armed forces of this
country continue to fight effectively and decisively against terrorists
to eradicate terrorism.
Under the pretext of fighting PKK terrorists, Turkey has deployed its
troops in areas of northern Iraq and Syria and is conducting aerial
attacks on parts of the northern areas of these countries.
Under
the pretext of combatting terrorism, the government of Turkey is
carrying out a genocide. The Kurdish people are under assault in the
same way the Armenians were under assault 100 years earlier. The
Turkish government denies the ongoing genocide but they also deny the
Armenian genocide so they really don't have a lot of credibility. Patrick Wintour (GUARDIAN) reports:
Turkish airstrikes that allegedly targeted a civilian hospital and killed eight people in Iraq have been made the subject of a formal complaint to the UN human rights council.
It
is the first case to be brought on the issue of Turkish airstrikes
against the Yazidi people. The attack on 17 August 2021 destroyed the
Sikeniye medical clinic in Sinjar and left more than 20 people injured.
The
four claimants, either survivors or witnesses to the airstrikes, say
they violated their right to life under international law, as guaranteed
by article 6 of the international covenant on civil and political
rights.
Further, the claimants allege that Turkey
failed to investigate the killing of civilians resulting from the
airstrikes and provide victims with effective remedies, constituting a
violation of their rights to a prompt, independent and effective
investigation under the same covenant.
In other violence, MEHR NEWS AGENCY reports,
" A logistics convoy belonging to the US Army was targeted in Iraq's
al-Diwaniyah, local sources reported on Monday morning." This follows,
see Friday's snapshot, the news that a US helicopter crashed in Iraq.
Let's turn to the US.
And, sadly, that's not humor from Paul. It's a true story and QUEER NEWS TONIGHT covered it last week.
Last week, Derrick Van Orden was in the news (see Rebecca's "derrick van orden is a menace")
for yelling at teenagers in the halls of Congress. Derrick was
reportedly drunk. That doesn't excuse him, nothing does. We bring his
vile and disgusting name up because he's done something similar:
On June 17, 2021, Van Orden confronted a teenaged library page at Prairie du Chien Memorial Library in indignation over a display of books with LGBT themes assembled for Pride Month.[16] Van Orden was particularly upset by the book A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, about a fictional day in the life of Marlon Bundo, the real-life pet rabbit of former Vice President of the United States Mike Pence, and the rabbit's subsequent same-sex romance.
Van Orden submitted a written complaint to the library that the book
was "skewing young people to think that Republicans are not inclusive.
This book is not informational, it is propaganda".[17]
A staff member described Van Orden as "very uncomfortable, threatening"
with "full-on shouting" and "aggressively shoving the books around". He
wanted to know who had established the display so he could "teach them a
lesson".[16] Van Orden subsequently withdrew all the books on display out of the library and then returned them within a week.[16]
And you can be sure he's masturbated to each one because that's what perverts like him do, masturbate to children's books.
A North Carolina school board censured one of its Christian members
for posting an anti-LGBTQ+ image on social media that showed an American
figure assaulting an LGBTQ+ figure. The Christian man defended posting
the image, saying he had free speech rights to oppose “woke” cultural
issues.
The Mount Airy Board of Education held a special meeting on
July 10 to censure board member Randy Moore, a U.S. Army veteran who was
appointed to the board in January 2021. Moore had posted a Facebook
image of a figure in red, white, and blue colors kicking the midsection
of another rainbow-colored figure symbolizing the LGBTQ+ community, The Mount Airy News reported.
I
think I've seen that image. I believe it was a Tweet on a flash drive
left at my agent's. It was supposed to contain Glenneth Greenwald's
browser history. I have no idea if it was Glenneth's history or not.
This was noted in "TV: The fork is stuck in her ass and, yes, she's done:"
Sidebar,
we were sent what is supposedly Glenneth's browser history. If it is
accurate, he's even more disgusting than we thought. If it hadn't been
sent this morning, we'd be working on that as a story. Not on the
Glenneth aspect -- we don't know whether it's really his browser history
or not -- but on the issue that Twitter is platforming hate speech.
This is much worse than what people usually complain about with regards
to Twitter. This is "White power" accounts promoting Donald Trump while
ripping African-Americans, gays, trans, Jewish and pretty much
everyone. And to be clear, they're not using terms like
African-American or gay.
It
is disgusting and it is appalling and there's no way in the world that
Elon Musk is doing his job yet is unaware of these accounts.
There is a movement to target any group that's a minority.
Whether
it's Glenneth's browser history or not, he is part of that movement.
His statements and his actions make him part of that movement and it's
only surprising to you if you haven't been paying attention (we weren't
paying attention).
The
drive was filled with all sorts of disgusting images. People like
Randy Moore don't see themselves as gay because they're degrading the
"f**got" -- that is the term they use in illustrations and Tweets. Yes,
they're sexually engaged with another man in their Tweets and fantasies
but that doesn't make the Randy Moore's gay -- in their minds. Their
hatred for gays (and women who sleep with them) is why there is so much
violence in their Tweets and in their imagery. They're convinced that
the road to Donald Trump's re-election in 2024 is finding gay men who
are self-loathing and want to serve 'straight' men. It's disgusting --
and perfectly in keeping with the sort of thing Glenneth would be
sexually interested in. It's also all over Twitter and there's no way
in the world Elon Musk is unaware of it. It's vile and violent and
these men attack gay men and attack women. They're disgusting and Randy
Moore being a part of that would make 100% sense.
