Priceless truth arrives in Ed Naha poetic justice

I cannot possibly craft a better Winter Solstice message than the following, created by Ed Naha. We are in the midst of the a Constitutional Crisis on par with the Civil War, in which most of our civil liberties, civil rights, and truth has been cravenly destroyed for the pursuit of consolidation of power and greed.

'Tis a thought before Christmas

by Ed Naha | Dec 18 2007 - 10:20am |

'Twas a country quite listless, for in the White House
All the shredders were shredding, fed by the dry souse.
The Department of Justice did not have a care,
Full knowing that Congress would never go there.

The Cabinet was smirking, with zero street cred,
While visions of pardons danced in their pinheads.
And Bush in his flight suit with Dick spewing his crap,
Called up party faithful to cheerlead their pack.

When from the front lawn there arose such a clatter -
'Twas an army of citizens (as if they would matter).
Junior and Cheney were up in a flash,
And to the back exit they carried the trash.

Trucks took the confetti away to a dump
And Junior was giggling, like a lame frat-boy chump.
When, what to their wondering eyes should appear,
The Statue of Liberty, and for all to hear,

She roared at the duo that they made her sick.
The scoundrels, they trembled (especially Dick).
And, with a bald eagle, she hurled out the blame,
At appointees and annointees, she called them by name.

"Out, Dubya! Out, Cheney! Out, Rice and Mukasey!
Out all the enablers, both crooked and lazy.
You've ruined a nation, with your greed and gall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

Junior was frightened. He squealed like a sow.
Cheney retreated. "Feets don't fail me now."
So into the White House, they ran and they hid.
They both called their lawyers. What facts could they rig?

And then, in a twinkling, they saw in the hall
A figure approaching, both regal and tall.
He had a white beard, wore a star spangled hat.
He sneered at the duo. "Your uncle is back."

He was dressed like a flag, from his head to his feet,
But the flag was all tarnished from lies and deceit.
He stared at the culprits. "Do you know who I am?"
They both nodded dumbly. It was Uncle Sam.

"To the words of the law, you have turned a deaf ear.
You've squandered your power. You've made people fear
For their lives and their families. You've tortured the facts.
You've never been leaders, just political hacks."

Uncle Sam bristled, rolled paper in hand.
"It's the Constitution! The law of the land!
This land isn't your land. This land isn't mine.
It belongs to the people and you've run out of time.

"They'll no longer listen to vows learned by rote.
In next year's election, they'll turn out and vote.
They'll fix up this nation. They'll bring freedom back.
We'll no longer torture. We'll get out of Iraq."

Old Dick tried to argue, but as the Veep rose
Sam launched a haymaker upside Cheney's nose.
Bush began spinning, and whined like a girl
As Sam opened the window and spoke to the world.

"Trust in your Uncle, Lady Liberty, too.
We'll be back here in '08, after this wrecking crew."
And the people all cheered as Sam called through the night.
"Don't give up on freedom. Don't give up the fight."

Hello?? Hello???? Are any of you paying any attention??

I propose that there are, among the meta-causes of the collapse of the US empire (and along there with, the very fabric of the US Constitutional government and the nation as we once knew it), two streams of political power that derive their authority from a nearly identical insane claim of manifest destiny. The first stream is dominated by the Israeli lobby funded by Jewish-based US economic interests grounded in the dogmatic belief that they have a divine right to claim a chunk of the planet regardless of any other person’s life or limb. This first stream must demonize and dehumanize the whole of the Middle Eastern Muslim people in order to garner justification for taking possession of territory and natural resources. The second stream is the expansion of Xtian fascism throughout the US, mirroring, in its own vitriol, the very ideals and rhetoric of their sworn enemies, the Islamic population of the planet. The Xtian fascists envision their nation as their version of Israel (albeit an Xtian homeland, free from infidels and blasphemers), seeking to transform the US into teh Xtian nation; one that removes their non-Xtian neighbors, recreating a reservation system (not unlike Israel’s various Palestinian enclaves) that began by the systematic destruction of the native indigenous populations of the lands.

To accomplish their goals, both of these streams demand obedience and direct support from the US government and US-globalized media. Israel needs the US to control (read this as destroy infrastructures and kill millions of inhabitants) the Islamic nations of the Middle East, thereby freeing the natural resources (first and foremost water, then oil) for their use and profit making. The Xtians need the US to enter a permanent state of war against all of their enemies, including it seems the very planet, in order to free up access to the remaining natural resources necessary to protect their own survival at the expense of all others. Both religions, view the Muslims as a grave threat; all the more so because usury and corporate profiteering are among the greatest of all sins in Islam, while considered the greatest of all virtues for the Jewish and Xtian leaders. Theocracies built on profit and massive accumulation of wealth and control of resources, good; theocracies and all other governments that might offer progressive distribution of resources to all of their constituencies, very bad!

In Mearsheimer and Walt’s heavily researched and factually supported study, the authors demonstrate the deleterious effects “the lobby” has had on U.S. relations with Palestinians, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Lebanon. The two scholars conclude:

"The lobby's influence helped lead the United States into a disastrous war in Iraq and has hamstrung efforts to deal with Syria and Iran. It also encouraged the United States to back Israel's ill-conceived assault on Lebanon, a campaign that strengthened Hezbollah, drove Syria and Iran closer together, and further tarnished America's global image. The lobby bears considerable, though not complete, responsibility for each of these developments, and none of them was good for the United States. The bottom line is hard to escape, although America's problems in the Middle East would not disappear if the lobby were less influential, U.S. leaders would find it easier to explore alternative approaches and be more likely to adopt policies more in line with American interests."

When one reviews the basic infrastructural developments in Israel, one easily discerns the hallmarks of ethnic/religious cleansing, subjugation of the indigenous populations; certainly not at all unlike the treatment in the US of the American Indians. Carving out reservations and then subsequently and continuously invading them, shrinking their boundaries in violations of treaties and agreements, claiming dominion over all of the necessary life sustaining resources, until, one day, there are only a handful of the original inhabitants left. Seems like one model develops the other, in turn leading the new one to model for the old.

In James Aho’s landmark sociological study he writes about the essential underpinnings of Xtian fascism: (on page 220)

First and preeminently, dualism. Relative to the doctrine of divine transcendence, of a perfected, spiritualized (male) Creator residing in distant heavens, the material (that is, feminine) world is profanity, unconsciousness, and death. Among the images of this fallen world are the “curse” of matriarchy, “bull-dyke” women and ladylike men; actions alleged to be associated with them – sex education, birth control, sloth, drunkenness, pornography, drug addiction, raucous music, gluttony, revelry, dance, and provocative dress; policies that presumably promote these – passivity, pacifism, communalism, and moral “dissolution” as expressed in the practices of profit without productivity, pay without work, crime without punishment, seizure without compensation, purchase without cash, and its inexorable accessory, usury; knee-jerk tolerance; the promiscuous mixing of “distinct” things – creeds, nations, species, races, classes, and roles; philosophies of hazed vision, blurred edges, and relativity; games of chance, ouija boards, the I Ching, astrology, and other New Age “satanic” technologies; and promoters of these policies – secular human educators, the liberal media, “politicians” (by which is meant those aggrandize themselves by compromising with all of the above), the “Soviet controlled” National Council of Churches, “socialist” bureaucrats, and chief conspirator himself, the archetypal “Jew.”

… A second element in the projections of those called to patriotism is the reduction of historical events to the conscious intentions of the omniscient and all-powerful. The search for the ultimate causes of social decline invariably ends in the quest for whom to blame and whom to eliminate.

Third and finally, there is a pervading conviction of cosmic exigency, that the world and thus life itself is in dire emergency, the never-ending search for signs of the Apocalypse and the Last Dispensation, and that the Second Coming is imminent. {The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism, James Aho}

Rush Limbaugh: "I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus -- living fossils -- so we will never forget what these people stood for."

Ann Coulter: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

Or: "We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too."

Bill O’Reilly: “Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything and they don't care, couldn't care less.”

Michael Barone: “Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and ... transnationalism.”

Karl Rove: “Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year? Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.”

Kathleen Parker: “Here's a note I got recently from a friend and former Delta Force member, who has been observing American politics from the trenches: ‘These bastards like Clark and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and Gephardt and Kucinich and that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined up and shot.’ "
(courtesy of David Neiwert column series)

Is it any wonder that the David Addington crafted for Dick Cheney documents for the President to sign: initiating martial law preparations under Presidential Directive #51, which abrogate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878; the termination of habeas corpus (even for Americans) with Military Commissions Act of 2006; the widespread incarceration of non-violent and petty offenders in a corporate, prison-industrial complex; the outsourcing of elections to companies pushing paperless virtual voting; the development of a mass surveillance society based upon Orwellian principles; and unprecedented state-sponsored propaganda and fake news.

We are at a critical crossroads in the US. The challenge is whether we, the citizens, allow this nation to become its own xTian version of Zionist Israel—a theocracy that marginalizes and fratricides the non-believing majority into non-existence, or do we reject in toto the theocratic impulses and drive them back to their own lands in the Middle East from which they claim to have originally come. If you don’t think it can happen, just ask any of the remaining American Indians you might be lucky enough to find. At one point, we comprised 100% of the continent’s two-legged population, now in the US we don’t even count much over a single one percent.

an essay by Lexi Coburn

Erosion and the Human Disconnection

As we have seen throughout the course of our world history, imperial civilizations have continuously expanded and collapsed; to name a few: Ancient Greece, Roman, the Mayans and the British. Collapse was, in some ways, due to their disregard for the natural world and its naturally necessary processes; ignoring the environmental and its natural resource exhaustion while simultaneously expanding the scale and scope of their territories. When Europeans came to America in the 17th century, their attention was focused on their immediate needs and desires, through which they used the land as they pleased. During the 19th century, however, some advocates for the environment awakened, trying to change the developing attitudes of the country, though change was markedly slow and diminutive. The mid 20th century witnessed the sudden and frightening impacts of natural processes reacting to this human disregard: dust bowl, DDT toxicity of the environment, air & water pollution, etc. These events provoked a re-energized interconnectedness between humans and their ecosystems among a small minority of the population (>20%) (Weisman). In our current state, what has become most evident, is the human spiritual and psychological disconnection from the world/earth in relation to the unending natural processes of erosion; this remains potentially catastrophic for the Earth’s future, especially in terms of human lives and diversity of species.

Erosion (as defined**)1 in this essay will be viewed in terms of the psychological and spiritual processes of the ongoing disconnection between humans and the earth. The earth exists as an entity, both physically and spiritually, constantly changing and rotating. The earth embodies life, humans, animals, organisms, and plants, water and natural processes through which all life participates and exists. These natural processes, such as erosion, complete the life cycles of the planet and its inhabitants, birth, life, death, regeneration, and renewal. It is through these processes that life exists. Erosion is a process of change, deterioration and renewal. Some of the causes and properties, and/or elements, of erosion consist of: earth, air, fire, and water. Physical erosion is most evident in the constant changing, and redevelopment, of our landscape through storms, rushing water weathering rocks, carving hillsides, cliffs and canyons and transferring soil, wind wearing down land forms and fire regenerating forests, breaking down life to create new life. Erosion, in its physical manifestations in the human cityscapes, defines itself through cracked, stained and broken down roads and sidewalks, infrastructures and automobiles are dilapidated and piles of discarded waste are deposited almost anywhere. The earth’s natural processes of erosion whip through the cityscapes, destroying and ravishing the space through which humans nonchalantly rebuild their homes and malls; for example, Louisiana in 2006 after hurricane Katrina.

The psychology of erosion is played out in the minds of the humans, there seems to be this collective denial of the process of erosion in terms of death, change/physically and the illusory fantasy that nature will not prevail. The reality in which people live in America seems to be framed by its cultural and mainstream media networks, particularly those funded by corporations that depend upon insuring that people fight the erosive processes of aging and decay through purchasing their products (all of which of course cannot, will not, ever prevent death). Death seems to contain the same implications as erosion. The conceptual frame of “death” is perhaps the focal point of the disconnection of humans to the natural processes of erosion. Through death and decay, through erosion---with respect to the non-human planes of the Earth --- comes new life, new material for life, new building blocks for life. Medical practitioners define aging and the process of dying with a negative connotation in relation to the process of erosion. This collective consensual notion causes people to overreact (demand medical interventions against these erosions), strengthening the fear that makes the most natural of processes seem paralyzingly unacceptable. Through our actions and trepidations of dealing with death, humans devastate the landscapes; killing natural living organisms that would have aided in the processes of natural erosion, but now cease to exist. We bulldoze forests: for their potential medicine (yew trees and plants in the tropical rainforests); to grow non-native species of products to help us works towards immortality (bio-energy fuels, medicines, specialized paper products); and to get at the earth beneath them for endless riches (oil, gas, mineral wealth). Our agricultural revolution strips soils of needed life, freeing the topsoil to blow away and clog streams killing riparian habitats and fish; loosing silt into river systems to be trapped by dams (increasing their inability to hold water) and thus increasing the loss of wetlands and beaches that sustain whole biomes of life and species (Montgomery 9-25). We do the same with our cities and towns, our highways and harbors, our pipelines and airports.

In the American culture, there is a defiance about becoming old or letting things get old, buildings, new cars, etc. “Technology is problematizing death. Technology has frozen conditions between life and death;” our advancement in medical technology has also sufficiently prolonged human life, causing overpopulation and too much wear and tear on the earth, thus halting the natural processes of erosion (Hughes). Makeup, plastic surgery, wrinkle cream, all items and methods advertised in the American society to hide and deny the fact of appearing old and/or this process of physical human deterioration or erosion. People, animals, plants, etc, are suppose to die, that is part of the natural cycle that is exhibited daily in the wilderness and in the world. By altering nature, the spiritual connection between humans and the earth has rapidly declined. Human beings are no longer being present, listening to the natural world, or actually seeing they are caught up in their created consumptive realities, that continue to destroy and deplete the earth’s natural resources. Within the last 30 years, we have witnessed extreme changes in the earth’s climate patterns, some that have resulted in rather large catastrophic disasters, each weighing heavily on our loss of spiritual connection with the earth and our lack for psychological admittance for dealing with the natural aspects of living on planet earth. It would even be appropriate to suggest that because of humans’ lack of admittance and disconnection, they erode our economic systems and increase the instability of the human biome to sustain billions of people. Our fear of death promotes our destruction of the planet thus increasing our likelihood of death. This is being dysfunctional, being disconnected from the whole of the natural processes of all life. We, as a human species are devouring the earth at a rate of more than four earths combined; though we seem oblivious to the reality that we only have one (Global Footprint Network). 2

Part of the earth’s existence is this constant notion of change. As science has taught us about the evolutionary growth of the earth, it has been known that through billions of years to seconds of every ‘day,’ life on this planet constantly changes. New lives come into being and older lives are recycled back into the earth. In the current 21st century, there is no reason why this cycle would be any different. However, the human species, has managed to take over the entire world, thus forgetting its roots and where it originated. It has created its own vast materialistic capitalistic society that is seriously detrimental to the earth’s well being. Change is a part of all life. The human society in America, creates realities with false constructs, denying its very own existence, by which people live their lives, trying to find permanence when there is none. Humans are trained from the earliest age to fear death, the only actual and real certainty of their lives. Fearing the one thing that one knows for sure will happen, encourages the development of materialist illusions furthering the disassociation and disconnect. The planet is destroyed to prolong human life, sheltered in massive consumption and celebrity media.

Our spiritual and psychological disconnection with nature, has allowed us to forget that despite our denial, deceptions and disillusionment of the natural world, nature will prevail. Nature has an agenda, by which we have finite limits placed on available resources, human biomes, and population carrying capacity of the planet. If humans could get back to their roots, honor and respect the natural processes of nature, it seems that there might actually be hope for the planet and for human life.

In conclusion, there are people, and large groups, working everyday for the environment, but I don’t think people realize that the process of reconnection and preservation is a never-ending cycle. It is, and needs to be, constantly recognized and honored to re-establish connection. In my life, I try to be conscious and aware of every decision I make with my relationship with the earth; though it is indeed difficult at times living in this culture. It is vital and important to the sustainability of the planet that people become conscious of their dependent interconnectedness with the planet, everything else is ultimately an illusion. Changing collective human consciousness is possible. One of the earth’s foremost deep ecologists and leader of Australia’s environmental movement, John Seed, writes

“…since the day we were born, we have inherited shallow, fictitious selves, and have created an incredibly pervasive illusion of separation from nature. The fact that our sense of alienation from Nature is entirely an illusion can be demonstrated very simply by holding your breath for a few minutes. We can speak of “the atmosphere” as if it were somehow “out there.” But it is not “out there.” None of it is “out there.” The air, the water, the soil, it is all constantly migrating and cycling through us. There is no “out there,” it is all “in here,” but most modern people, even those who agree theoretically, don’t experience the world in this way. As long as the environment is “out there,” we may leave it to some special interest group like environmentalists to protect while we look after our “selves.” The matter changes when we deeply realize that the nature “out there” and that nature “in here” are one and the same, that the sense of separation no matter how pervasive, is nonetheless totally illusory. I would call the need for such realization the central psychological or spiritual challenge of our age.”

1 **Transitive verb 1 : to diminish or destroy by degrees: a : to eat into or away by slow destruction of substance (as by acid, infection, or cancer) b : to wear away by the action of water, wind, or glacial ice c : to cause to deteriorate or disappear as if by eating or wearing away.

2 The Global Footprint Network allows one to get an estimation of their own ecological footprint in relation to the rest of the world. He or she plugs in her own information about the sustainability of their own lives, information about everyday decisions that are detrimental to the well being of the planet. The outcome shows how many planet Earth’s you need to live your current lifestyle and how many Earth’s would be needed if everyone lived your current lifestyle. The average for the United States of America is 24 acres per person, which equals approximately 6 Earths.

Juan Cole's statement... in toto... please share

Time to Close the US Embassy

I don't try to start an internet campaign very often, because the blogosphere has its own priorities and logic that are democratic and should not be forced. But here is a plea for everyone in the blogging world to help force congress to save our diplomats.

Bush is trying to Shanghai several hundred foreign service officers and force them to go to Iraq. They are protesting.

Now is that time for all Americans to stand up for the diplomats who serve this country ably and courageously throughout the world, for decades on end. Foreign service officers risk disease and death, and many of them see their marriages destroyed when spouses decline to follow them to a series of remote places. They are the ones who represent America abroad, who know languages and cultures and do their best to convince the world that we're basically a good people.

The US embassy in Iraq should be closed. It is not safe for the personnel there. Allowing the kidnapping our most capable diplomats and putting them in front of a fire squad is morally wrong and is administratively stupid, since many of these intrepid individuals will simply resign. (You cannot easily get good life insurance that covers death from war, and most State spouses cannot have careers because of the two-year rotations to various foreign capitals, and their families are in danger of being reduced to dire poverty if they are killed). There is, in addition to the daily danger, no good escape route for civilian personnel from Baghdad.

Bush should not be allowed by Congress to commit this immoral act against the civilians who serve us so faithfully.

Please write your congressional representatives and senators and demand that the US embassy be closed and the forced deportation of US diplomats to Iraq be halted.

The Democrats have been facing the dilemma that they are blocked from doing much about Iraq. This is something they can do. Cut off funding for the embassy and force most of the diplomats home. This is the way to start ending the war.

Now.

oPen tHread for dEad hEads...

On November 16th-18th, 2007, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst will host the symposium, Unbroken Chain: The Grateful Dead In Music, Culture, And Memory. Expanding the focus of the current history courses, and with the participation of UMass alumnus (Ph.D., History 1979) and Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally as well as numerous other scholars and luminaries, the symposium will combine academic inquiry, performance, and artistic appreciation in an innovative multi-disciplinary, multi-media program. (for more information see this article and links)

While we were hoping to have some of the more famous (and infamous) of the Deadheads attend (sadly Walter Cronkite is really not well enough to travel, and Peter Jennings has been dead for two years) we can expect a few rare appearances by some of the freaks whose shadows cast some degree of influence over the last forty+ years. Therefore, as part of my own participation in the endeavor, i would like to open this thread to throw out a request for comments about how you, as individuals, have perceived the Grateful Dead, the band's social and cultural influences, psychedelics, the sixties and hippies, etc.??? I will not, and do not, expect only positive comments, as i am well aware, for example of the Chairman-for-Life's own antipathy regarding the band and its music. Negative views of the band's cultural relevancies are encouraged, as, of course, are positive ones. The music is not really the issue at this point, regardless of what Phil Lesh once said that it was only about the music (what does he know, he never once saw a single GD concert). It is more about how the Grateful Dead were experienced and understood by those inside its meme (the Deadheads) and those so far outside that world that they may not even have heard about hippies???

WHY CAN'T THE DALAI LAMA GO HOME FOR THE BEIJING OLYMPICS?

Well perhaps it is due to the following insanity in the form of an utterance by the official Tibetan Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli:

“Such a person who basely splits his motherland and doesn’t even love his motherland has been welcomed by some countries and has even been receiving this or that award,” Tibet’s Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, told reporters during the congress. “We are furious,” Mr. Zhang said. “If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world.”

Wow, so vitriolic and idiotic at the same time. The arrogant assumption that Tibet is China, predicated on an invasion by Mao, and a cultural revolution that eradicated history for a billion people, seems to fly in the face of any reasonably intelligent human being with access to the internet and an interest in history. But there’s more of course; consider this:

“He should resolutely abandon his Tibetan independence stance and activities,” Tibet’s governor, Qiangba Puncog said. “But in my opinion, some of those activities are actually escalating and setting a lot of obstacles for further progress.”

Has that ring of a made man, you know like Tony Soprano, telling you to just shut up and “forgetaboutit”. “It’s a done deal, Tibet is China, so shut your trap!” And, I suspect most citizens of the US would prefer it that way. Why??

Well consider the behavior of those, in the US, who are suggesting that people who acquire access to health care for their very sick children are inferior beings who lack substance and character. There is not one shred, not one single cell, of compassion within these evil and twisted things. If Michele Malkin’s vicious and hate-filled attacks on one family aren’t sufficient to make the comparison (between China’s leadership and the conservative imperialists in the US), then examine the following assassination attempt on another SCHIP family: National Review’s Mark Hemingway attacks the Wilkersons as irresponsible parents:

Dara admitted to me that she and Brian had been talking about having children since before they were married. She further admitted that after they were married she voluntarily left a job at a country club that had good health insurance, because the situation was “unmanageable.” From there she took a job at a restaurant with no health insurance, and the couple went on to have a baby anyway, presuming that others would pay for it and certainly long before they knew their daughter would have a heart defect that probably cost the gross national product of Burkina Faso to fix. But not knowing about future health problems is the reason we have insurance in the first place.For Dara and Brian Wilkerson, the fact that they don’t have health insurance is less about falling through the cracks than the decisions they’ve made. We know that Dara is at least capable of getting a job with insurance — so why does she not have one now? Even if it is difficult insure her child’s pre-existing condition, what about her and her husband’s health? Perhaps it’s rude to ask that question, but I think it’s rude to accept huge amounts of public assistance and then express gratitude by asking taxpayers to extend a Children’s health program to cover college-age kids who come from households making more than $80,000 a year.

Which brings us to another salient point — Bethany Wilkerson is healthy. She is covered by existing programs and has already received the much of the medical care she needs. The current debate centers on expanding the program, not kicking the Frosts and the Wilkersons to the curb.

So I hope Bethany grows up strong — I’m worried about her. Not because I’m worried that the state won’t take care of her, but I’m afraid that her parents will continue to set a bad example. In which case, she’ll need all the help she can get.

In the much the same way the Chinese rewrite history to suit their immediate needs in an effort to assassinate the character (well they do actively kill thousands of Tibetans too) of the Dalai Lama, the defender of compassion, Hemingway and cohorts of the reichwinger fascists ignore any factual records and historical processes to produce his version of character assassination (shall we try to ignore his blatant racism for now?). The facts themselves are pretty clear cut; from the Wilkersons:

We have seen the statement about my previous employment and here is what we have to say: I left my previous place of employment years before Bethany became part of our lives. I am a hard working woman. I have worked at Snappers Sea Grill for over 6 years. It is a good work environment and I am a loyal employee. My husband and I were blessed with Bethany two years ago and we are even more blessed to still have her with us today.

The Wilkersons said they are fully aware of the possibility that their finances and personal lives may be investigated by opponents of the SCHIP bill.

“We rent a house, we have one car that is a junker. Let them dig away, Bo Wilkerson said. “I have $67 in my checking account. Does that answer your question?”

The messengers from the empire are quite clear in their intent. If you disagree with them, suggesting that they present egregious misstatements of fact and reality, then you are a fatally flawed being who is at best a bad example, and at worst a grave threat to peace and well being. So there we have it; a no holds barred tag-team battle between compassion in one corner, represented by a Buddhist monk trained in compassion and a 2 year old girl, against imperial fascism, represented by the most unlikely of all possible allies the leadership of the Communist Party of China and US conservative leaders hiding behind their hypocritical shield of compassionate conservatism. Picture it in your mind: the Dalai Lama sitting next to the Kalachakra mandala with Bethany in his lap, across the ring from the President of the People’s Republic of China sitting on his pontifical throne with the kneeling Mark Hemingway and Michele Malkin (licking Hemingway’s face) begging for the last crumbs of the collapsing dollar.

just a little reminder to choose wisely

The imperial powers that be in this nation, require that the population be complicit in their efforts to dominate and subdue the planet and all its resources. To do this they need us to be afraid or at best inattentive. The most efficient way to accomplish this is to make big splashy video news stories about art being bombs and humiliating tasering of kids as entertainment, thus wrapping the consumer consciousness into fear. They need us to be consumed by being solely within ourselves. The ME Generations are the Pepsi generations that selfishly and unconsciously think only of themselves and their own small issues.

Next time you watch the video of the kid in Florida being tasered, watch the other students. They are too busy being concerned about their own issues, to even bother to pay attention. The world is out there and demands that we get up off our collective asses and hold our public servants accountable for encouraging us to be narcissistic idiots. They don't want to solve the healthcare crisis, only keep us concerned about our own health. They don't want to end the war, just keep us focussed on how it can't affect us personally. They don't want to confront global climate crises, only insure that we worry about our next pay checks and the price of gasoline.

Well, try to remember that you have the choice to pay attention. You can choose to not be selfish. You can choose to care about the earth, and all of her inhabitants. You can choose to make each moment a celebration of your connection with all of creation. We are completely and utterly dependent upon the Earth for our life. We cannot stop paying attention to that.

Camp Zoe'de Luscious and da nightmare

One of the metaphors for this summer has been the use of the Bell Curve (the normal distribution as a model of quantitative phenomena in the natural and behavioral sciences is due to the central limit theorem. Many psychological measurements and physical phenomena (like noise) can be approximated well by the normal distribution. While the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are often unknown, the use of the normal model can be theoretically justified by assuming that many small, independent effects are additively contributing to each observation—yada yada yada) for describing the inherent properties of each of the tour stops, particularly the qualities of the attendees. Now that may or may not be fair, nor accurate for that matter, it was our choice to use it and we (the select group of “professionals” who ventured forth from venue to venue in the quest for the holy grail of production) tended to understand what we meant by our applications of it across the breadth and depth of the western USA. Thus I offer this assessment of the Big Summer Classic weekend held at Camp Zoe (near Eminence) Missouri the first weekend of August 2007:

Given the Bell Curve that represents the quality of an event in relation to the qualities of the people attending, BSC could be categorized as containing only the upper 3% and the lowest 3% of the spectrum of observable and experiential phenomena. There were stunning and amazing moments that represented the very best of what the summer had to offer; there were some of the most heinous and vile of experiences that no human being (or any other species for that matter) should ever have to be in the presence of anywhere anytime. There were brilliant and inspiring people doing good well, and there were some of the stupidest and most idiotic creatures inhabiting human skin.

And that was just a bit of it. Really. And while I intend to get into more of that in a bit, I do want to spend a moment of your reading time discoursing on one of the tragedies that became apparent over the weekend. One of the “thangs” I do at these events is to develop, organize, produce, and present series of play-shops that cover a vast and wide variety of activities and topics. I invite speakers, artists, performance arts instructors, crafters, poets, songwriters, activists, et al (an entire spectrum of people) to offer the attendees opportunities to engage in something other than being spectators of music. At the BSC I had the chance to offer eco-hikes and cave-tours of the more than 380-acre site located along the Sinking Creek fork of the Current River in the heart of the Ozarks. For guides I contacted some local enthusiasts, a couple of whom are among the nation’s elite as spelunkers, as well as several naturalists (along with being some of the Midwest’s finest age group mountain bike racers). We didn’t expect too many of the 6000+ folks to want to engage in this sort of actual physical activity, and the caving aspects were more limited to climbing and walking into cliff-sides, the deepest of which was perhaps 200’. We did expect that some people would enjoy the chance to be out of the high heat and humidity, and that since so many of the important spots were along the river, there was always the opportunity to cool down.

By the Friday afternoon scheduled hike/tour, more than 150 people had shown up to participate. The numbers were staggering, in that we used only the program guide, six (well placed I might add) information kiosk signs, and a couple of announcements over the localized festival radio to let people know. By the end of the festival more than 500 folks had taken the tours and availed themselves of the experience. So why do I call this all a tragedy??? Well, in debriefing the tour guides and talking with participants I discovered that a vast majority (close to 90%) was taking the tours to become better informed about their local environment. People literally begged to be told about various species of flora, fauna, and fungi. They were clueless about the imminent and most dangerous threats that literally lurked throughout the site: rattlesnakes (a 44 inch one was killed on the road that previous Monday), copperheads (two were killed over the weekend, one nearly 30 inches long) and cottonmouths (we kept the people off the section of the site in which the swampy land was located). Some people showed up for the 1.5 hour hikes on hundred degree (and 100% humidity) days without water some thought bringing cans of beer would be good), and wearing flip-flops; completely oblivious to what the concept of the term “nature hike” might entail. Others, when told that they would be expected to wade across the river (not all that deep, but with some sizeable holes) acknowledged that even though they didn’t know how to swim, they thought it a grand idea to make the effort.

While this was going on, I was also producing a series of social-enviro-economic justice playshops that were very well attended. It became readily apparent that those choosing to attend were doing so because they desperately wanted specific online and textual references that covered a diverse spectrum of activism and critical information. Some came to find out about the global climate crises; some came to learn about their legal rights regarding use of psychoactive substances and what was happening throughout the country; some came to learn about ecotopias, intentional communities, and permaculture; and still more needed information on food safety, water and air quality, and healthy living. Why oh why did these young people not have this information???

Well, one aspect became apparent the moment you stepped out of the tour bus on the site. Everybody in Missouri smokes cigarettes! Okay, not everybody, but such a vast huge majority that there was not one place I put my foot down (and sadly that included the river) that I did not find a cigarette butt or remnant thereof. There are no smoking laws/ordinances in Missouri; voted down by those Missouri rebels fraught with the desperate desire to be unregulated in every manner of their lives. Thus the vast majority of 6000 people smoked, and did so with zero regard for the health and quality of air of others. Most of the time, the only place we left coasters could escape the presence of constant smoke (and hell we were outdoors for gawd’s sake) was in the backstage zones and our own buses and RVs. It was really awful. At times I discovered myself quite literally surrounded by smokers all of whom were more than happy to stand real close and blow smoke in each other’s faces, as well as mine. It was as if the west/left coast of the US was a foreign country wherein the residents live completely different cultural lives.

However the real issue for me, for those that attended the playshops, was the glaring lack of reliable and intelligent internet access most of them have in their lives. If they did grow up with it, and many did not, they were only connecting through dialup services. Now, as someone who is old enough to know better, even I get tweaked when I am not in an environment that has high-speed/broadband connectivity; I have been observed this summer demonstrating tube-speed rage, cursing the vile and nefarious dialup demons who make accessing many important and useful sites quite impotent and useless. So I could sympathize to some degree with those who can’t possibly conceive that they could load whole pages full of multi-media windows in less than a second or two. But that wasn’t the core problem from my perspective; no, from my perspective the issue resolved around the somewhat intentional restriction of information access to the rural masses in the US.

Keep in mind that most everyone in the US, no matter how remote they live, has relatively unlimited access to AM radio and particularly to dozens of Christian programs and a daily handful of conservative talk radio programming. If you have been raised in these environs, and only have very limited dialup access to the world outside of these regions, you would view the behaviors of your fellow citizens, their government, and their nation in relation to the world quite differently. If the only information sources were all selling the same messages over and over (and those xTian and talk-radio realms most certainly do) you might come to believe: that there is no such thing as a global climate crisis, that the US is winning the war on terror and that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, that evil homosexuals are taking over the cities and destroying the country, and that only the GOP is good and can save us all. I wish I were joking about this, but in conversation after conversation with folks in the “hinterlands” I realized that the ones to whom I spoke were desperately trying to find source material to disprove these claims. The problem didn’t vanish when the kids (yes it is a pejorative term, that I use to refer to the thousands of people I encounter in the summer who are more than half as young as i) were able to go off to universities and colleges. The semi-rural realms of Midwestern universities were shown to be quite insular, particularly with regard to encouraging students to use the now really powerful internets to reach out and see what is really going on. Unless a student was mentored or advised to investigate some of the claims on their own, most did not “know” what to look for in terms of counter information to the AM talk radio and conservative local newspapers of their upbringings.

I was constantly bombarded to provide actual URLs for sites (including this one I proudly mentioned, especially because I think those who contribute hereon are really valuable resources) across the spectrum of social, environmental, economic, and health-based justice. We (those that read this site for example) are most accustomed to quickly mentally referencing a dozen or so sites from which we choose to examine the critical issues of our day. These sites are nearly commonplace references, yet when I mentioned a handful or so to dozens and dozens of folks, I was returned blank stares and literally begged for the “exact URL, please.” Heaven forbid (and there are those I am sure who beseech their gods to forbid it) that some of these folks (kids) would read blogs or review source materials on the internets. I could only imagine that for many of the parents of the attendees watchingamerica.com must be perceived as the most evil and communist (Stalin and Mao rolled into one) of sites, daring to present anti-US propaganda from furren gummints. I particularly remember a couple of students from Ole Miss in Oxford, MS, and a half dozen from Lawrence, KS University of Kansas, all of whom stopped me over the course of the weekend (even at two in the morning in two cases) to get more references.

I will not mention their names (protecting the cognitive liberties and all that), but I will offer one anecdotal referent. The Kansas contingent was led by a young woman graduate student, who had grown up in Missouri, but had been able to attend a prestigious East Coast university (in Massachusetts). She had graduated with a degree in environmental studies-permaculture, and then spent the next two years living within two different intentional communities (in two different states) that practiced permaculture and commercial organic farming. She had returned to graduate school because she felt passionate about being able to disseminate to broader audiences her avocation and vision for how to survive into the future. The crew that had come to Camp Zoe with her (interestingly all guys, and yes she was a very beautiful young woman), and who had volunteered (with perhaps another dozen) to participate in the nasty work of developing, implementing, and completing a massive recycling effort (as not yet previously undertaken in that festival space—seriously they didn’t “do” recycling nor know much about it), could at best be described as naïve about issues of ecosystems, watersheds, and long term global climate crisis. She encouraged me to talk with all of them about my perceptions of the problems and to provide numerous resources for internet links. Although clearly a leader among them, it appeared to me that her femininity was still an issue for the males with respect to her “authenticity and authority” on these matters (sad, sad and tragic). My elder male status (my gawd how awkward that was given my background and experience) seemed to be something that empowered her (and that just sucks {more of the tragedy of it all} given her intellect and maturity to have to be subsumed into an ass-backward, provincial Midwestern anti-feminist environment, even in a graduate program at a university) to open up publicly about her own background and work (hopefully she will become a great teacher and leader and given the respect she richly deserves from males as well as females). As she spoke up and offered insights and asked many good questions, other young women felt safer to do so as well.

It was as shocking and surprising to me, as the cigarettes and lack of awareness of what is happening in the world, to discover that middle-amurka is still (or perhaps re-becoming) a patriarchal anti-feminist realm. It may be the AM radio, it may be the 91 churches (and big-ass ones at that) in a county with a population of under 20,000, or it may be that stubborn conservative GOP electorate really can’t let go of the 1950’s. Whatever it is, it is a serious problem and a tragedy for this nation. As Van Jones pointed out early in the Summer at the Harmony Festival, we (the environmental activist community and those for whom those views are considered important) comprise only 20% of the country at this point. And now, having actually ventured into that middle of the rural realm, I have come to understand just what he meant when he said, we haven’t got a chance until “they wake up, too.”

Now I know this is getting long in the tooth, and I could go on and on, boringly and tirelessly just to describe those three days (casual Lucinda Williams referent), but I will try to shrink wrap some of it into a few tidbits more of anecdotal sentences about the top and bottom of the bell curve. Well, there is the food of Missouri; and thank all the glorious spirits of luck and good fortune that encouraged the moneyed interests to hire a backstage caterer from Denver who knew how to make healthy amazingly excellent meals. You can only eat barbequed pork, chicken, and beef so many different greasy fatty ways; hell you can only prepare it so many ways, and yet they serve it three, four, or five times a day to each other—with cigarettes of course. We stopped at one of the only restaurants (an actual roadhouse) we could find open between the festival and the “other world,” and discovered much to our dismay that every single item on the menu was fried. Stunning how in one sense how diverse the fried material could incorporate, given a typical Midwestern farm (not a lot of green leafy stuff out there, and to them the only type of lettuce is head/iceberg), it was somewhat understandable that the roadhouse would offer fried tubers of various sorts (yes rutabagas and turnips were on the list). Breakfasts were to be avoided at all costs (sausage, eggs, bacon, gravy, biscuits, ham, repeat), with most everything cooked in lard, and lunch was not much better.

Counter that with a fresh water river, fed by artesian springs pouring out of the porous limestone hills, whose temperature was immaculately perfect, that allowed you to choose any sort of comfortable position you chose to enjoy the water—whether it be head-deep pools, soft sandy shallow sloping beach, natural rock chaises across different depths, multi-layered flowing rapid currents to massage the aches, and so much more. Then, late at night, under the appropriately named Echo Bluffs (a hundred foot limestone face with a slightly concave, erosion-sculpted surface) five hundred people could stand or lay, in or out of the water, and watch HD-DVD videos projected across more than 50’ (and without much damaging distortion, MVP), and listen to a stereo sound-system that had been intentionally placed and tweaked to create full surround sound using the limestone surface. Looking up you could see the trees at the top of the bluffs, then the stars, then the moon and realize that you were experiencing the best drive-in movie experience ever!!!

Or take the absolute mindlessness of attendees who constantly ignored how packed the amphitheater was for the shows, while choosing to launch all manner of fireworks off from the middle of the crowd (and without any conscious thought about where they ended up). Given that less than a couple of hours away the “ the US capital of supermarkets of fireworks” was open 24/7 to happily sell any conceivable type of incendiary and explosive devise to any and all takers, the sorts of releases from the audience were quite large and powerful. If that weren’t enough, a few truly stunningly stupid folks decided that fire dancing, with poi and wands and staffs, was also an appropriate thing to do in the middle of hundreds of people. That only one poor soul was lit on fire by the idiocy could be considered a miracle, seeming to be beyond the pale in terms of human disregard of others and complete lack of conscious will to care for anything.

If that isn’t sufficient to prove the bottom end of the curve, consider the following. While cruising around one mid-day, I was stopped by a patron demanding that I use my “authority” (as if being an old guy, with a radio and golf cart had authority—and there were at least a half dozen of us who fit that description), to stop two young, urban black men from selling heroin and cocaine in the campground. Since the person expressing this problem to me was a young white male (and I was in Missouri where confederate flags fly all over the damn place) I wasn’t particularly alarmed by the request. It also wasn’t my role to interdict anyway, since we had paid for a security company to come in from Kansas City to do that (and they were a huge part of the problem as well—what a goon squad of former collegiate and professional football players bent on shaking down the clientele and selling the drugs and alcohol back to them at night), but I drove over to see how obvious the two sellers were. I found them, more obvious than they needed to be, mentioned that if I was getting a complaint, then others were as well, and that maybe they needed to either leave or close up their enterprise. They were quite nice about it, and relatively soft spoken (though I later learned they were popped by the security boys, who swore that the two were East St Louis gang-bangers yada yada), and agreed to lay low. But that wasn’t the real problem. That they were selling heroin and cocaine (and mollys) at a rather remote rural music festival represented the existence of a market among our nation’s youth, and one that was already becoming prevalent and costly. There had been some OD’s and deaths at music festivals this summer from mixing of opiates and other pharmacology. Not more than three hours after I had talked to these two, a young white woman was found unconscious in the river. She responded to anti-OD drug therapy, and was revived; she was also subsequently arrested. In trying to discern her identity, it was discovered that her backpack contained more than an ounce of high grade black-tar heroin, a large supply of small zip-lock baggies, a digital scale, and nearly $2000 in cash. Forsaking the rule of all dealers, she was obviously strung-out on her own inventory, and had seriously misjudged the quality. And she was not the only one; two other OD’s occurred, both white males, both in their early 20’s. The only obvious junkies I observed all weekend were young, white, apparently affluent youth, male and female. It was clearly apparent to me that the two, urban-street, black males were at a competitive disadvantage in this downer market space; it belonged to the white “hippy” kids.

As tragic and sad as that was for me, the other end of the curve was just as amazing and exhilarating. Following the Saturday night main-stage set and a day of great performances by musical legends, the owner of this wonderful site, led a large contingent of drummers in a quite well performed drum circle gathering. This took place next to a huge bonfire and was graced by three stunning women (two from Africa) who led those willing in the most inspiring of tribal dances. The joy and wonder that was on the faces, and in the minds, of the four or five hundred people assembled was awesome. It was a rare and beautiful moment, rich in connections to all of our primitive tribal roots, no matter what our genetic heritages, and to have had that moment over the weekend was a thrill and high for me. It got even better when the host then began to tell stories around the fire, encouraging others to do so, and that continued well into the night. WOW.

Or consider that members of bands, who had traveled all over the world over many years, were awe struck by the reception they received in this very out of the way, lost in the Ozarks, world. The trumpet player of the Wailers, wandering around in the throng being thanked by folks for coming to their world and playing for them, smiling hugely as he walked along the banks of the beautiful river late at night to discover the film theater.

Del McCoury and his band, a decidedly classical bluegrass group, enjoying the reception they received from people who were dancing at the rave scene, a contretemps moment made whole by the discovery that a world renowned DJ could quickly mix some of Del’s music right into the trance-zen-house flow he had going. Not often do you get that sort of awareness and shared acknowledgement in this business along the backroads of Amurka.

I was also mesmerized by the Kaivalya Hoop Dancers ({http://www.myspace.com/kaivalyahoops} from Boulder, Colorado); a group we had brought in to teach basic and advanced modern hoop dancing (up to but not including fire hoop dancing). To watch three or four classic farm kids, males and females, learn to dance quite skillfully with mylar-lasered, day-glo & glittered, large dance hoops (new style hula-hoops) over the course of the weekend was really special. Even the more athletic types, two swimmers from University of Missouri, got into the serious dance study, and ended up buying hoops to travel with over the course of the next swim season. It is the little moments and promise of things to happen in the future that made the weekend great.

Summer Tour 2007--106 days of phun

Anyway, i was trying to minimize this, but if any of you are the least bit interested, here is my follow-up on the "Indentured Servitude* Summer Tour of 2007?:

We started in LA, CA on May 26th with Pravda (an LA Philharmonic event) a program of electronica, thermin orchestras, audio/video/painting mashed mixed morphed together all focussed on Stalinist era propaganda as a mirror of BushCheney corporate master puppet string pulling.

June 1-3; Merced, CA: for the Heartland Farms Organic Farmer's summer picnic--how many ways can you hide in the little towns of Atwater, Merced, Turlock, Modesto, et al?????

June 8 -10; Santa Rosa, CA: Harmony Festival--other than introducing Arianna Huffington to 6500 people on the main stage, my fun was had mostly at night during the three all night performance palaces; there were some young female beat dancers that were way better than the male professionals and the fire dance troupes poured their bodies into flames. New Orleans Social Club, Steve Kimmock w/ Green Lemon and others, the Roots, a huge set of fun from ALO, hell there were fourteen stages people...

June 15-18; Grass Valley, CA: California Bluegrass Festival--i do so hate plink plink so i had to be glad there was some folky types in the mix.

June 22-28; Tucson, AZ: Molehill Orkestrah and solstice

July 5-9; Quincy, CA: High Sierra Music Festival--70+ bands and who could keep track when it was 105º F at 4000' in the Sierra Nevada; until Sunday when the wind change and the fire that burned for a week spewed volumes of smoke into the place making life a living hell.

July 13-15; Eugene/Veneta, OR: Oregon Country Faire--the faire was fair and lovely and fun as usual and even the Beatle tribute was okay in spite of itself. Ninja acrobatic jugglers seemed reasonable even, while lots of music could be enjoyed by all including Al Howard and K23 Orchestra, Strings for Industry, Lakshmi Devi, Green Lemon, et al.

July 20-22; Eugene: FaerieWorlds Festival 2007--an interesting venue filled with rich people trying to recapture some lost ancient lives or past souls or cool crystalline rune like Celtic names--i think????
July 20-22; Whidbey Island: Island Fest 2007--Al Howard spoke for two hours on his tour life in a small space and that was perhaps the highest moment (yes intended that link) along with Anoushka Shankar ripping a set with Karch Kale and others--oh my gawd.

July 26-29; North Plains, OR: String Cheese Incident Full Moon Dreamdance and Summer Camp AHA Creative moment: So many moments of great playshop panels intermixed with super fun staging and theatrics way over the top and beyond the pale of any imaginations--- Shebang was shebanging in ways that only YouTube can express at the moment.



August 3-5; Camp Zoe, MO: Big Summer Classic with String Cheese Incident but more importantly groups such as: Los Lobos, the Wailers, the Roots, the Greyboy Allstars, Infected Mushroom, Bassnectar, Del McCoury, JJ Grey and Mofro, Buckwheat Zydeco, David Lindley, Drew Emmitt, Chris Berry and Panjea--- Infected Mushroom has an electronicist that is amazing; the Wailers were way cool to hang out with; Del McCoury knows the arcana of tour buses; and Bassnectar mixed some Rage Against the Machine w/ Coltrane; but it was the youth of the midwest that totally blew me away....

August 10-12; Red Rocks, CO: String Cheese Incident's final faretheewell where Peak dropped some serious prop bombs on the unsuspecting audience.

August 18-; Berkeley, CA: Watershed Poetry Festival

August 24-26; North Plains, OR: Northwest String Summit Spectacular w/ best sets of music from Strings for Industry ("this ain't no string cheese) and the New Riders of the Purple Sage ripping through some great material (w/ three songs performed with John Marmaduke Dawson -very ill but was fired up) including a stunning "Garden of Eden!"

August 28-August 31; Black Rock City, NV: Burning Man 2007 Green Man/ the man burned during the total lunar eclipse five days early (totally cool)

August 31-Setember 3; Tucson, AZ: Tucson Film and Music Festival w/ Friends of Dean Martinez and members of Calexico and Giant Sand---FoDM played their composed soundtrack for a screening of the 1926 animated German film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.

*i am enslaved to three production companies that are entwined in a wonderfully-collaborative, vertically-integrated, economic way.

on the road again..thinking thoughts of days gone by

Sorry, had to knock on the front door, because i lost my passport during the outside-fence customs officer’s insistence that he search my cavities (i mean i just went to the dentist). And i was going to send the MOJ a com-postable thread about the following, but the topic is germane, and i am trying to do this as secretly and discretely as i can given the environment.

Last Sunday, i suffered through one of my more embarrassing stage moments. Not to go into too many of the background details, but at last week’s event all three of my production companies were contracted to perform work. For three days i helped to provide infrastructure by which the promoters operated the event. Then i worked on an adventure game, through which ticket holders to the three-day festival could participate in a variety of hands-on activities across the entire human need spectrum (learning about sustainability, greening, and alternative methods etc.). But the toughest role was as the coordinator of emcees and author of scripts and schedules for the 14 stages and three days and nights of performances, speakers, panels, et al.

Due to a variety of “issues” (human behaviorial/attitudinal/socio-pathic?? and transportative), the schedules were updated each morning and again in the afternoon each day. I was literally forced to sit infront of a laptop and laser printer pumping paper while gofers raced changes to various stages. Finally Sunday afternoon i got a chance to let go, and using my ‘connections’ i allowed my mind to be stretched and plasticized and… (well you get the picture). I am sitting in the back of a small pavilion waiting for Dennis Kucinich to arrive, talking with a phenomenal bass player (well-known band as well as currently touring with a small jazz/fusion/rock ensemble led by a legendary jazz electric guitarist–no more hints), and mellowing out. Out of nowhere arrives a compatriot to tell me the whole thing is changed again, and that the Mayor and State Senator who were to introduce Kucinich and other guests also is not there. I was now assigned to help negotiate the scheduling changes and to introduce Arianna Huffington to the assembled masses in the big main stage area.

You have to accept that i was looking a bit haggard after a couple of days without sleep (hey now, they couldn’t keep me penned up at night during the late night shows), and looked not only scruffy, but genuinely trashed, and that doesn’t account for my mental state. At least i was wearing a t-shirt a friend had made with the image of Bush in an hourglass draining down into forming a new and better Earth. So i jump in the cart and whizzed off to the main stage back area, and spent the better part of twenty minutes haggling over who goes when, then where, then how. Much too much to try to describe here, but consider that a napoleanic british stage manager who hated any changes, was quite irate already, and furious with this latest interjection of flipflopping and reshuffle. So in comes two limos, one with Kucinich and one with Arianna. I got my good buddy to intro Dennis, and i am to introduce Arianna. I can’t imagine what she must have thought about this strange freak who was about to walk on main stage, calm down the crews, and tell 6000 people how cool she is. I didn’t imagine it either.

I have no idea what i said or how it came out or what happened really. All i realized in that moment was that i suddenly remembered the three different film crews who were documenting the event. Damn, here i am spaced-out tripping, trying to remember the three whole facts i need to remember, and there are all those pesky cameras. I don’t care about the 6000+ people, hell they wouldn’t remember anything; but a documentary film, a festival DVD production, and a feature film crew using the event as background for small scenes, were right there in front of me with boom cameras, back set shots, and two onstage competing handhelds. Fuck!! fucking god-damn posterity, digitally recorded into harddrives as i am handed the mic by the seething, teeth-gnashing stage manager.

What’s her name?? What is the name of her new book?? What’s this fearless shit? Whoa. I still don’t really know, and i don’t really want to either. I have tremendous respect for Arianna Huffington for making the paradigm shifts in her own life, for helping and supporting the new media, especially the blogsphere, and for putting herself out there to take the shots. I suddenly was very determined to get off the stage and find the next bite of special chocolate truffle to rid myself of any remnant of memory of all that.

I am relatively assured that somewhere down the road, some of that will popup on Youtube or MySpace vids or Google vids…Just keep in mind when it does, that part of my was having so much serious fun 20 minutes earlier, and another 20 minutes later. But Dante could not have felt worse in that middle period.

Consider Nuremburg, consider the USA

A US Navy lawyer faces six months in prison and dismissal from service for sending a human rights lawyer the names of 550 Guantanamo Bay detainees. Lt Cdr Matthew Diaz, 41, posted a list of the names in an unmarked Valentine's Day card during the final days of his service at Guantanamo Bay in 2005. The US military had originally refused to release the names of the men it was holding at Guantanamo Bay. The names were made public in 2006 after the Associated Press news agency won a court case against the military.
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<>At a court martial, Lt Cdr Diaz was convicted of communicating secrets that could be used to harm the US and of three other charges of passing on information to an unauthorised person. The jury recommended that Lt Cdr Diaz receive full pay and benefits during his time in jail. The sentence and the dismissal order are reportedly subject to further approval and to review by an appeals court.

'Morality'<>"I had observed the stonewalling, the obstacles we continued to place in the way of the attorneys," the paper quoted Lt Cdr Diaz as saying. "I knew my time was limited... I had to do something. The officer said he had been moved to act because prisoners' rights under the Geneva Convention had been violated. "No matter how the conflict was identified, we were to treat them in accordance with Geneva, and it just wasn't being done."

<>The US government says the men held at its military prison in Guantanamo Bay pose a grave threat to the country and have not been tortured. The Dallas Morning News quotes Lt Cdr Diaz questioning both these assertions. The sentencing of Lt Cdr Diaz has been criticised by the Centre for Constitutional Rights, the New York-based human rights body whose lawyer received the Valentine's Day card and the list of suspects. "We believe that Lt Cmdr Diaz's actions were grounded in a strong sense of morality and commitment to the rule of law," a statement on the centre's website said.

Well well. Given the decision by the jury of six military officers, who were of course only following orders, it is clear from the precedents set at Nuremburg and at the IMT in The Hague, that these officers now need also to be considered direct co-conspirators in the perpetration of crimes against humanity and other war crimes. Their decision, to imprison a fellow officer for acts to protect the human rights of prisoners of war who were being inhumanely treated and detained without due process, is added to the crimes of this nation against the peoples of the world. Their names must be added to the expanding list of those who commited these crimes. They too must be held accountable by the peoples of the world. We can no longer stand by and let these vile and evil people continue to destroy the foundations of liberty and human rights.

Squeezing parity out of the turnip

From a cross-post at WAAGNFNP a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy...

Warning, this post is acronym filled, and may contain nefarious allusions, probably inappropriate but nevertheless, they exist.

UNITED NATIONS Copyright - A new treaty designed to promote and protect the rights of the world’s 650 million persons with disabilities opens for signature at the United Nations on Friday.

At its core, the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ensures that persons with disabilities enjoy the same human rights as everyone else, and are able to lead their lives as fully-fledged citizens who can make valuable contributions to society.

Forty years ago, as an upper-division undergraduate student, I was offered one of those scholarship jobs that go to jocks and related others. These were legacy-based inheritances, passed along to the next class of student athletes by graduating seniors, eagerly anticipated by the younger, who have heard-it-through-the-grapevine that this or that is the coolest chance at getting paid to do nothing, or close to it. My offer was not for one of those cushy roles (lifeguarding the women’s gym pool {only male allowed}, or driving the little tractor that picked up golf balls), but rather a heritage role for those of us in a special and unique club (the fish lane). Ours was the strand that provided support staff for the Education and Psychology departments’ on-campus education environments.

Thus I was obliged to interview for the role of motor performance skills instructor at the research facility for children with learning disabilities. Being a talkative sort, and relatively comfortable with public speaking, I was regarded as sufficiently acceptable and given the job. I ended up keeping it well past my graduation, up until the end of my first year in graduate school. My only previous teaching experience had been as an infant swimming instructor, teaching children under the age of two some basic water safety skills (it was the era of massive build out of SoCAL home pools), but lack of such experience was not apparently a critical consideration. No, what seemed to matter most was the capacity to interact and get along with children of the rich and famous (those who could afford to get their kids into the school) who were identified with a range of learning disabilities (and related handicaps, etc.).

Now this is long before there was the IDEA Act, its subsequent amending legislations, ESEA I & II, ADA, etc., etc., et al. We didn’t have IEP’s or 504s or EIS documented meetings or plans. We didn’t have FERPA, or OSED’s TA&D, to be guides or regulatory oversights. What we did have was: an incredibly dedicated core staff, professors and researchers from departments and psychiatric institutes, observers and lecturers, symposia and conference. Thus, we had meetings, lots and lots of meetings. My personal education in special education was gleaned from these meetings and daily discussions about this or that kid’s issues or problems of the day. As someone who was focused on looking forward to teaching in the university, I didn’t have the slightest interest in all this elementary work; it was just a good job, good hours, and a source of daily learning something, like a daily vitamin supplement.

Years later, working in public education environments, serving on SELPA’s, developing transitional, annual, and triennial IEP’s and 504s, meeting with teachers and parents—I was grateful and appreciative of the experience I had had back in the university. I could relate, I could understand, I could sympathize. I could sense the subtleties behind determining whether this or that kid needed or could best be served by mainstreaming, or pullout, or core services; I could advocate for students who needed to leave the regular public setting and spend their high school period in special programs focused on their needs and best interests.

I also started paying attention to the populations who attended the music festivals and concerts that I helped to produce and direct. Several of us passionately argued for all-inclusive environmental supports for the altered-abled, working diligently to insure that people with all manner of disabilities, handicaps, issues, could enjoy and experience our events to the fullest extent possible. Indeed this past weekend, at an Earth Day event, I watched a young woman sign the lyrics being sung by a raging punk band (how she knew what they were singing is beyond me?).

This has all been in a way of introduction to my rant for a more equitable exchange between those who deserve, and are entitled to, the assistance of the greater society in order to participate in parity with all others. With the advent of all of the legislative regulations and policies, more and more of our nation’s population are asking for and receiving an increasing share of revenue-based supports that offer significant participational parity. The future doesn’t look so bright either in terms of the predicted dramatic increase in citizens needing and deserving more care. This comes at a cost, one wisely paid by the taxpayers, to the overall wellbeing of the society as a whole, particularly in 21st century educational environments, but also in the day-to-day lives of everyone.

Under FERPA and ADA, parents and adults are informed of their rights to insist that this or that accommodation or praxis (regardless of the expense) be provided for their student. Such efforts are laudable, but grossly misjudged by the general population, and further mishandled by the bureaucratic institutions that are our public services. But this isn’t what is upsetting me at the moment. NO, what’s got my craw is what is happening on the public transit with all of the people willing to demonstrably exercise these rights. They are exceeding, rudely in some cases, the balance of parity, stating quite openly demands that they be given greater privileges and access than is equal or a fair share.

I serve on the citizens transit advisory board, a large and unwieldy group of active folks, mostly seniors such as myself, who have the time and freedom to serve on these types of councils, commissions, boards, and groups (I serve on no less than four, with less time to myself now than before I retired). We discuss how to better serve the region with more accessible and reliable public mass transit. We discuss numerous alternatives, fee structures, road conditions, driver and passenger needs and complaints, etc. And the biggest bone of contention is participational parity for disabilities; not because of the costs but because there are so many are becoming downright abusive and demanding.

For example, the other night, riding home on my regular route, an old Russian woman was sitting near the front. The bus driver and I usually share a casual conversation about the latest political or social upheaval of the day, sometimes getting other passengers engaged in some interesting social discussions (some of the kids are okay you know, they are paying attention and reading). Well last night this older lady (perhaps ten years my senior if that) starts shrieking “Shut up! Shut up!” pointing to her ears. She speaks little English but made it clear that any conversation on the bus was detrimental to her wellbeing. Flabbergasted, I politely refused to be quiet, but did speak in more hushed tone. Finally she thought she was at her stop, but became confused and needed to re-board and ride another block further. It turns out she had lost the remote control for her hearing aids and was unable to lower the volume. She could have turned them off of course, or turned one off, or manually turned them down, but no, that wasn’t what she wanted.

We are the medical industries’ service center for a vast region of western states here. There are numerous hospitals, training facilities, medical labs, rehabilitation clinics, hospice centers, and so forth. Specific bus routes are dedicated to servicing these facilities as well as those for residents who need them. There are hundreds of residents who require and use electric wheelchairs, powered walkers, and other support utilities and equipment as they move about the city. The transit system has been more than willing to expend resources to develop special transit options for people to use, smaller more maneuverable vans, better ramps and kneeling buses, and other such offerings.

Yet there is not a day that goes by without at least one (and usually several more) altered-abled person demanding that their needs and rights extend to the point that they directly interfere with the rights of all others. Rather than wanting to ride the special vans, people insist that they ride the regular route bus. Since they ride virtually for free or reduced fare, take up two to four seats (severely obese, wheelchairs), use no less than fifteen to twenty minutes of extra time for loading and unloading, demand that the bus stop at their intersection regardless of appropriate stops, and so forth—these rude riders are beginning to attract negative and detrimental attention from the taxpayers and others in the community. They are performing a disservice to themselves and to others like them.

They insist that the drivers punish kids for being loud (and sometimes the kids are loud, and disrespectful, but not always). They demand that drivers move passengers out of seats just in case some other person of need might later require it, claiming that all of these types of seats are only for them (signage clearly states in the best language possible, that a person need only ask to use the seat if necessary and that is the priority). The public has been incredibly supportive and tolerant over the years, and struggles to continue to be so. But the tipping point is coming, particularly stoked by cases of wheelchair operators (and disabled others with walkers, canes, and dogs) who do so while under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. There is nothing quite so provocative of irritation as a drunk handicapped person. Rude, loud, demanding, insistent—there are cases now where law enforcement must interdict to remove the person from the bus or the main downtown terminus. It is a problem and becoming a worse one, particularly as the regional VA facilities fill up with veterans of three wars, bitter and unhappy, treated poorly by those who serve them. Grumpy and irritable, they lash out verbally (sometimes physically) particularly at other younger handicapped and disabled people seen as competition for services and attention. We are seeing more and more complaints about these interactions from transit users, drivers, public media, and other citizens.

I don’t know the answer; I don’t know how to make this better. If you have some ideas, please post some comments. In the long run, this will be a growing problem across the US, as my generation of baby boomers feel more and more entitled to all of these sorts of services, while disdaining others who need them too. Veterans will need and demand more care; kids suffering from the ravages of environmental toxicities will be angry that they must share these ever limiting resources.

UPDATE: Over at Tom Dispatch, Chip Ward dicusses some of these very same issues from the perspective of the public library, another of our well served civil commons:

Ophelia sits by the fireplace and mumbles softly, smiling and gesturing at no one in particular. She gazes out the large window through the two pairs of glasses she wears, one windshield-sized pair over a smaller set perched precariously on her small nose. Perhaps four lenses help her see the invisible other she is addressing. When her “nobody there” conversation disturbs the reader seated beside her, Ophelia turns, chuckles at the woman’s discomfort, and explains, “Don’t mind me, I’m dead. It’s okay. I’ve been dead for some time now.” She pauses, then adds reassuringly, “It’s not so bad. You get used to it.” Not at all reassured, the woman gathers her belongings and moves quickly away. Ophelia shrugs. Verbal communication is tricky. She prefers telepathy, but that’s hard to do since the rest of us, she informs me, “don’t know the rules.”

Margi is not so mellow. The “fucking Jews” have been at it again she tells a staff member who asks her for the umpteenth time to settle down and stop talking that way. “Communist!” she hisses and storms off, muttering that she will “sue the boss.” Margi is at least 70 and her behavior shows obvious signs of dementia. The staff’s efforts to find out her background are met with angry diatribes and insults. She clutches a book on German grammar and another on submarines that she reads upside down to “make things right.”

http://tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=180836

WACIYEYE

I realize i have been neglecting this blogsphere to a great extent. I have been participating over at WAAGNFNP for the last few months as well as trying to manage some of the summer tour production constructs for Peak Experience. And now that summer is almost here, and the tour about to begin i realize i will have to put this blog on hiatus, until the Fall. I might check back in occassionally to post some tour news or whatnot, but by and large i will be hasta la vista baby. Oh well, have fun in the tubes and stay away from the spybots and NSA tags and invasive NARUS and NARO software mice. Damn pests need some serious extermination.

WAAGNFNP crosspost:

by spyder
My own take on May the first in 2007.

The following represents the strands of ribbons to become entwined as we dance around the axis mundi in the commons of a forest meadow. Each a line of thinking of the royal screwing that this day represents, so fertile and fecund, so phallic and virile, dancing about the shaft that has been deeply inserted into the mother, into the consecrated Earth. Plunge that puppy right in there, and dance the night away.

The Rites of Spring
Beltaine was a time of fertility and unbridled merrymaking, when young and old would spend the night making love in the Greenwood. In the morning, they would return to the village bearing huge budding boughs of hawthorn (the may-tree) and other spring flowers with which to bedeck themselves, their families, and their houses. They would parade back to their homes, stopping at each house to leave flowers, and enjoy the best of food and drink that the home had to offer. In every village, the maypole—usually a birch or ash pole—was raised, and dancing and feasting began. Festivities were led by the May Queen and her consort, the King who was sometimes Jack-in-the-Green, or the Green Man, the old god of thewildwood . They were carried through the village in a cart naked save the covering of flowers and enthroned in a leafy arbor as the divine couple whose unity symbolized the sacred marriage of earth and sun.

To Celebrate Beltaine Today
Arise at dawn and wash in the morning dew: the woman who washes her face in it will be beautiful; the man who washes his hands will be skilled with knots and nets. If you live near water, make a garland or posy of spring flowers and cast it into stream, lake or river to bless the water spirits. Prepare a May basket by filling it with flowers and goodwill, then give it to one in need of caring, such as an elderly friend. Beltaine is one of the three “spirit-nights” of the year when the faeries can be seen. At dusk, twist a rowan sprig into a ring and look through it, and you may see them dancing about the fairy rings identified by the trail of perfect mushrooms. Make a May bowl —wine or punch in which the flowers of sweetwoodruff or other fragrant blossoms are soaked (yes and even those mushrooms from the fairy rings)—and drink with the one you love.

Acid Commercial

Hands up Charlie and-uh…

Now if you’re tired or a bit run down,
Can’t seem to getcha feet off the ground,
Maybe you oughta try a little bit of L.S.D.

Only if you want to

Shake your head and rattle your brain,
Make you act just a bit insane,
Give you all the psychic energy you need —

Eat flowers and kiss babies
L.S.D.
For you and me!

So let’s get it on with a stiff drink of Kool-Aid in honor of the salt of the Earth, the hard working people.

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell ‘em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call.
Call Alice
When she was just small.
When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is nowhere at all
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen says “off with you’re head”
Remember what the dormouse said:
Feed your head. Feed your head. Feed your head.

from a 9th century Irish ballad

May day! Delightful day!
Bright colours play the vale along.
Now wakes at morning’s slender ray
Wild and gay the blackbird’s song.

Loaded bees with puny power
Goodly flower-harvest win;
Cattle roam with muddy flanks;
Busy ants go out and in.

Men grow mighty in the May,
Proud and gay the maidens grow;
Fair is every wooded heights;
Fair and bright the plain below…

Robert Herrick 1591-1674:

So when or you or i are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade;
All love, all liking, all delight
Aies drown’d with us in endless night.
Then while time serve, and we are but decaying;
Come, my Corinna, come, let’s all go a-Maying.

middle school low-brow May Day chant:

Hooray Hooray, the First of May
Outdoor fucking starts today!!

Yes, the Ruling Class War is on, folks - replete with Democrats who look middle-class economic disaster in the eye and demand more tax cuts for billionaires, Republicans who give company owners the middle finger, and Beltway reporters who toast it all to flutes of champagne provided by runway models. While our country is driven into the ground, it’s party time in Washington. And when the rest of us outside the Beltway look back, our kids will have just one question: What did we do to stop it?

and here is something i read from Haffner’s DENYING HITLER:

~~ Amid all the misery, despair, and poverty there was an atmosphere of light-headed youthfulness, licentiousness, and carnival. Now, for once, the young had money and the old did not. Moreover, its nature had changed. Its value lasted only a few hours. It was spent as never before or since; and not on the things old people spend their money on.
~~Bars and nightclubs opened in large numbers. Young couples whirled about the streets of the amusement quarters.

~~…Everyone was hectically, feverishly searching for love and seizing it without a second thought. Indeed, even love had assumed an inflationary character.

And from Alexandra Richie’s FAUST’S METROPOLIS

of the twenty-two murders committed by the left, seventeen of the perpetrators were severely punished, ten with the death sentence; but of the 354 murders committed by the right between 1918 and 1922, only one was punished. Vigilante groups made up of unemployed ex-officers and criminals continued to occupy the streets, murdering at will, clubbing and beating people accused of ‘unpatriotic’ activities.

Juxapose this with the report that two University of Minnesota professors recently “compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats.” Interesting to note that among the GOP cases were those involving Abramoff, Cunningham, DeLay, et al.

And as the dream died, and the first of May became the fourth and fifth of Mays, Country Joe MacDonald crafted this lovely lament:

When dawn comes to touch my purple haze
And evening’s drowsiness to carry me away
I know once again that there is nothing we can save,
So I’ll pack up my things, I’ll be on my way.

Yes, here I go again
Off down the road again
Thinking thoughts of days gone by.
Here I am again
Singing my songs again
Thinking and dreaming
Thoughts of you and I.

Swirls of giant colors swam madly through my head,
I looked around to find you, but I just found it instead.
It might have been a dream for all the things we said
But you promised me —
Darling you promised me —

Yes, and here I go again
Off down the road again
Thinking thoughts of things gone by.
Here I am again
Singing my songs again
Thinking and dreaming
Oh I feel like I could cry.

Father’s gone to fight the war,
He left us here alone.
I shiver in the lonesome night
Beside the telephone
But time brings no word,
I guess he’s not coming home,
It feels like the end,
It feels like the end, my friend.

Here we go again
Off down the road again
Thinking thoughts of things gone by.
Here I am again
Singing my songs again
Thinking and dreaming
Oh I feel like I could
Thinking and dreaming
Oh I feel like I could
Thinking and dreaming
Oh I feel like I could die.
Oh, yeah!

from Robert Hunter’s Corrina sung to the ever-insistent accompaniment of a Huichol peyote rattle and the Iquitos shaman’s drum.

If, who, how and why
don’t mean that much to be
long as it don’t hurt too much
believe we’ll let it be
Outside major darkness
where the circle is complete
there is no fear that lovers born
will ever fail to meet
Corrina / wake it up baby
Corrina / Shake it down easy
Corrina / Shake it on up now
Corrina / Shake it back down
Corrina / Makin’ me crazy
Corrina / C’mon baby
Corrina / Shake it all day
Corrina / Tell me what’d I say
Corrina / Shake it up closer
Corrina / Shake it away
Corrina / Shake it in the shadow
Corrina / Shake it in the shade
Corrina / Shake it on the shakedown
Corrina / Shake it uptown
Corrina / Shake it in the short haul
Corrina / Shake it around
Corrina / Shake it at the window
Corrina / Shake it at the door
Corrina / Shake it on the stairwell
Corrina / Shake it on the floor
Corrina / Shake it in the mornin’
Corrina / Shake it in the dawn
Corrina / Shake it all night babe
Corrina / Shake it on down