the abject denial of commerical media in US

In a few days the White House will welcome some American Idol contestants to visit the W. I am sure the handlers are well aware of the demographics and wish to attach their GOP hopes on the slimy bodies of preening celebrity wannabees. But this story underlies something that i have not seen talked about at all so far.

In not one single episode of any of the dozens of "reality" based programming as reality been presented. Are we to believe that not one person, among the hundreds, has mentioned the wars, global climate change, the costs of energy, etc.??? Not one???? For some reason (and speculation could take book volumes of text to discourse) the MSM has determined that all participants in their programming will never be shown discussing the reality of the world; they will only be shown worrying about their next consumer purchase, how they are viewed by the same/opposite sex, what time the next party begins, and so forth. This carefully scripted pseudo-reality portrays our US culture disdainful of any responsibility for the actions of our government, shows our "average" citizens consumed and engaged so much in their daily lives that they are incapable of comprehending international affairs. Is it even the least bit worrisome to the executives themselves that this portrayal is detrimental to the wellbeing of US citizens around the world, and fails completely in representing the views (as polled) of the vast super majority of US population??

We got problems, and yet, according to our media, not a single one of those problems involves the state and condition of living on the earth at this point.

A Kraft foods moment: libertarian perspective.

The other day, shopping in my local supermarket (and there is a word loaded with semioticity worthy of some academic research) i came upon a Kraft food representative working the cereal section. Another patron was overheard saying something about the hypocrisy of those who advocate in favor of the president's veto of the stem cell bill. I muttered something about the views of the founding fathers, as expressed in the constitution, to leave open all manner of imagineable and unimagineable future possibilities with regard to rights and civil liberties. The Kraft woman spokeup and said that the "founding fathers were libertarians." I was somewhat taken aback, in that one of the areas i research is the libertarian agenda, in which the core of their own philosophical thinkers do not accept this piece of gravitas, mostly on the grounds that it is fundamentally important to hold the classic liberalism of the enlightenment as the a priori foundation of later manifestations of libertarianism. But she also said something to the affect that the founding fathers were not only libertarians, but also good christians helping to form the "new israel." Yikes, she was espousing the contradictory view that the founding fathers were libertarians bent on creating a theocracy.

Yet even that didn't really get my goat rammed up. NO. What got me was what she was doing. Given her expressed passion for libertarianism, i was shocked at her own blatant hypocrisy for abusing the shelf space of a competitor. In essence she was declaring her own eminent domain of the grocery shelf for her products, reducing the size of both her major competitor and hiding the generic brands. This was not only a violation of what she professed to be her own principles, but it is a type of fraud given how product placement contracts are written and manifest in stores. I may be one of the few people, outside of grocery stores, to know how the system works. It is expensive and complicated and requires honesty and trustworthiness of the corporate representatives. Clearly the Kraft woman was not about to honor the domain of a competitor, and was busy claiming space, not hers, for herself; eminent domain!! Her actions belied her expressed views, and demonstrated that the rights of others are not worth acknowledging in the pursuit of capital asset acquisition. That got me to thinking about another form of piracy.

One of the more common misconceptions, philosophically, in assessing political networks and representational interconnectedness, is that anarchists are directly linked to libertarians. This simply is not true, and the best illustration is piracy and pirates. Well there is that and there is the bizarre support that US libertarians show for Israel to use massive military force against whole populations as part of their right as a nation. I link these two because if ever there was a nation created by an act of piracy and eminent domain, it is Israel (the US is of course the master role model). Pirates use the ultimate threat of imminent death to lay claim to any and all material possessions they feel they desire, then divide up those items equally through a consensual democratic process (pretty far from libertarian ideals). There is no property that belongs to either the pirates or their prey, just the process of redistribution of matter, encouraging its flow in a multitude of forms, at the point of destructive weapons. Each pirate was/is his/her own master, free to engage or disengage from the collective, but once so engaged is responsible to the collective to maximize the efforts to appropriate matter to be distributed.

Now, one of the justifications that is too oft provided for the existence of the nation state of Israel, is a biblical history that is not without some very controversial facts. There is much evidence that the torah was created in and around 1000 BCE as a means of justifying military action to support the consolidation of tribal groups under a rigid theocratic feudal system. It need be noted that even the Torah lays this out as the result of military conquests (supported by some god) of peoples living in the region they wished to occupy. In essense Israel's own historical claims to its land rest on acquisition through violence and piracy. Couple that with the eminent domain actions of the US and UK post WW2 in taking Palestinian land (land upon which most of the Semetic peoples have lived for 3500 years or so) and giving it to a group of chosen jews, and you discover that at the very root of the ongoing strife is the use of military might to sustain control over land taken from others. The expansionism of the Israelis, taking more and more of the former Palestianian lands as well as those belonging to other nations, all supported by the claim that they are protecting their nation, is further acts of eminent domain for the sole purpose of improving the material wealth of its citizens at the expense and suffering of others. It is nothing but piracy. Taking the homes and possessions of the Palestinians, removing people from their farms, expanding their territorial boundaries through military might, and so forth, is just the behavior of thugs and bullies, not of revered nation builders.

But many libertarians, for the most part, love and support Israel. It must be their neo-con, Straussian, Randian, objectivist interrelatednesses. It just baffles me how they can fight so hard against eminent domain and then turn around and reward it.

Kilakhota kteh^cin hetucha.

Reading the rationalizations given for irrational acts, particularly regarding providing justifications for Israel's actions, leads me to ponder some questions that seem to elude most of those who are doing this. First, if they weren't Jewish, would they try so hard to do it? Second, why do they insist on forgetting (excusing) the behavior of the zionists in forging the nation-state in the first place? Third, are they so enraptured in the throes of Jewish ecstasy that they simply disregard international law whenever it might conflict with their personal biases?

One of the more rational of these irrationalists, insists that Israel has the right as a nation to defend itself against anyone who attacks it, regardless of the causality of the attack. Perhaps the attacks are responses to Israeli attacks but that no longer matters to these people. Perhaps the attacks, killing civilians (women and children indiscriminately) are lashing out at sixty years of terrorism (now fully sanctioned state sponsored, but originally the cowardly acts of the zionists), but that doesn't count either. Perhaps the attacks (wow, they kidnapped one guy and shot nine), were in response to the expansionist agenda (from the original 17% of Palestine to an armed occupation of nearly 85%) all carried out at the point of vicious weapons killing tens of thousands and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee, but somehow these people don't have any right to resist anything.

It is too easy to drape the flag of Israel having a right to defend itself because of some historical victimhood. It is also too easy to suggest that such a right allows Israel to attack other nations and populations because somehow (and clearly never specified, defined, proven, or verified) these nations are participating in efforts to destroy Israel. Unfortunately both of these views are wrong and need to be discredited. I would think that the best way to solve this problem, if violence is justified, would be to arm the Palestinians with the same weaponry as Israel (including nukes), give each 50% of the original land, and let them start the MAD chess match. Wouldn't that be fair, equitable, justifiable, reasonable? No?? Then why is any violence justified???

the Democratic bitches of CA...

I am extremely disappointed in the support demonstrated for HR 921 by the top tier of Democratic leadership, especially the big three females from CA: Boxer, Feinstein, Pelosi. The resolution offers wholesale support for Israel in its behavior, although that behavior violates any number of international agreements, conventions, US and international laws, and so forth. The idiocy of these bitches, the blatant pandering to the jewish money, and bilious hypocritic stands--all of these are what make the Democratic party the perenniel loser that it is. The supposed condemnation of the Islamic groups, for behaving in ways absolutely no different than Israel, indeed behaving in much less violent, much less illegal ways, reeks of the duplicity that the party leadership of both parties flaunts in the face of the world.

Federal law prohibits the use of US manufactured military weapons, sold to other governments, on general populations and public/private infrastructure. Hell, Federal law prohibits that use by our own government, although noone dares to question the tactics of shock and awe. And there is the crux of the issue. The Israeli bombing of: Lebanese citizens (a host of Christians even), roads, bridges, airports, power installations, hospitals, medical clinics, libraries, food production facilities, food and water storage facilities; these are illegal acts, war crimes and crimes against humanity. But for the US to condemn the acts, the US would have to admit its own criminal behavior in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since we can't admit that, and because Israel and the rest of the world know that we can't, we are forced to support Israel hideous and vile behavior. And so it goes.

another roadside attraction

has pulled me off the road and onto a siding. This won't last long, but i can report that out there in america there are still way too many people who don't seem to care that they, and their behavior choices, are creating suffering and damaging the earth. It really is that simple. The equations are too obvious to be ignored.

Take for example the way in which we discard and handle our waste/trash. I have spent considerable periods of time on archeaological digs of middens, some 1000 years old, still others 5000 years old. All that is left in those middens are bones, and shards of stone or pottery, and maybe rarely some pieces of fabric tied in bundles to be protected. None of the middens, even those less than 300 years old, produce toxic leechate or other heinous hazardous material. The technology simply didn't exist to toxify the water and earth, to damage and kill other species by human trash.

Today, that is all changed. A landfill, incinerator, processing unit, whatever, is a toxic circus nightmare, giving up after each rain a little of this or that poison or toxin into water or soil. These hazmats and toxic substances have inordinate half lives, some as long as forever in some cases. Recent studies on citizens who have spent their lives in the state of Washington show that these people have accumulated levels of some of these chemical wastes that are permanently hazardous to their health. They didn't knowingly put them in their bodies; it was just living and eating, drinking and breathing, the environment of WA that has created this problem. It is much worse for other species. To deny one's complicity in this, or worse, to justify behaving in this manner is criminal misconduct--it is attempted murder.

So why do so many keep doing it???