spyderwebbing

How i became known as the "Medicine Man" (abridged version)

2011-04-24T18:47:00.000-07:00

Asked by a number of friends to tell more stories about the days gone by, i am particularly drawn to telling the saga of the Medicine Man. And yes, it is true that Steve Fisher attached that appellation to me, both as a joke, and to some degree in bestowing an honorific of sorts. But the story started long before that time.

Wayback in the wayback machine of Peabody and Sherman, i had the good fortune of going to UCLA for my higher education. The good fortune came not so much from the fine education itself, as for all of the great interesting people that i met and befriended. This included the Merry Pranksters, my first ex-wife, Terry "Flanafish" Flanagan, some notable members of celebrated sports teams, my mentor professors, illustrious and infamous graduates, and so forth. I also met people outside UCLA that greatly influenced twists and turns in my life. Lifeguards at Zuma in the mid-60s (the eccentric renaissance man Norton Wisdom), lifeguards at WR in the early 70s, graduate students in diverse fields across the country including Harvard and Yale, a handful of 60s bands most of whom disappeared over time, with one profound exception, etc.

In the abridged version, it was this glorious melting pot of a fine entheogenic stew in my brain that led to Fisher calling me Medicine Man. I was at UCLA in grad school, studying shamanism and the history of American Indian religions for a doctorate. I had good friends traveling around the world, conducting anthropological fieldwork, especially focussed on Shamanism. And i had two friends graduating from Harvard Divinity School (RF and Ev), one of whom (RF) contributing greatly to my path development. It should also be noted that i was in the middle of divorcing my first ex (El), and meeting my second (JH). So the stage was prepared (there were also lots of other things happening to and for me as well: teaching, working in the music business, loving the ladies, and so forth).

During the Summer of 1970, El and i took off from UCLA right after the Kent State protests, and dove into the back country of the Yosemite (we got an unlimited backcountry campfire all access pass from the supervising ranger who was the father of a good friend). Over the long five months of summer, various friends would meet up with us at different access points and hangout for a few days, bringing news of the world (riots, Nixon, protests, sports, life). On one of these adventures RF and Ev arrived with some of our supply of pure entheogens, wanting to go for all the gusto. It was during this "massive trip" that RF and i discovered that we were both really interested in the Lakota rites and rituals of South Dakota. His family was from the eastern side of the state, and my dad was from the west. We made some silly commitment to longterm plans to get together at some point in SD.

Time progressed, my doctoral research moved forward, i left El, found JH, worked at WR in the summers, and went about life. In the early fall of '72, i spent a day eating peyote and reading the whole of the newly released book Seven Arrows. I remembered things that i had overlooked from previous experiences, and began to connect the dots. I set about doing small rituals for myself, particularly at the beach, as a means of just connecting with the natural world. I became very good friends with Chuck King at Tower 18, talking about his days in WW2 and studying at Brown University, his writing poetry about connecting with nature. In December, my phone rang. It was RF, who had moved to South Dakota to work on the US Senate campaign of a family friend, James Abourezk. He said that Jim had won, and that he (RF) would be working as the Field Rep in the West River office (the western half of the state where the vast majority of the Lakota lived). He invited me (and JH) to come back for a visit, and suggested i could conduct fieldwork on shamanism among the Lakota.

I was already well versed in Lakota studies; i had become something of an expert in the Ghost Dance among them, knew the religious transformations that took place between the forest village dwellers of the 1600s to the Plains warriors of the 1800s, and was starting to train myself to speak the language. I couldn't go the first year (my music biz boss was rapidly expanding his enterprises), i still had classes to finish, and another summer of the beach. But i did go in January of '74 (and each year after that) and found an amazing and inspiring place. The politics were blown up with Wounded Knee, the FBI, the tribal goons, and a host of other ongoing sagas, but the true nature of the Lakota and the Black Hills was easily accessible. I met a number of spiritual leaders who became friends. I ended up working in the Senate office with RF. I could go to rituals that few other people could attend.

Each summer i came back to the beach i was changed. At first it was little stuff, performing rituals around my towers, spending time in the late afternoons meditating on the water and waves, delighting in creative pursuits, really enjoying life. I started doing little sweat lodges and feasts in the evenings for lifeguard friends, bringing back rocks from South Dakota and across the country from tribal lands.

I'm not sure when Fisher first called me Medicine Man, it was sometime during this period. It really hit home one winter when Fisher, Morales and myself spent three weeks crossing the High Sierra through Yosemite. Prior to that trip, i had performed a couple of vision quests with the help of John Thomas and Flanagan, including a modified sun dance at the beach. When Fisher, Morales and myself went on our trek, i did take some entheogens for various purposes, and we had amazing experiences including skiing down waterfalls, crossing large avalanche chutes, climbing and skiing peaks. We talked about that stuff, and i think Fisher came up with the name to give me the proper amount of grief.

things for which i have terrible distaste in media

2010-11-10T23:37:00.000-08:00

Online advertising with all of those scripts and popups that make it nearly impossible to completely load a page. I cannot even begin to tell you what any of them are about, because i tune them out.

All of the people who comment on GoComics Doonesbury daily cartoon page, who seem to think that the cartoon is magically real and about real things that happen.

Corona Beer commercials that promote the lethal use of alcohol on beaches (74% of all drownings are alcohol related).

The Fashion Police and host Joan Rivers, both of which are disgusting and horrendous examples of psychologically abusive bullying and abject terrorizing imagery.

A Direct TV advertisement that clearly shows a waitress toxically poison a group of customers for their football preference

The funding of the "grassroots" tea partiers by large corporate interests hiding behind non-profits, PACs and 527s after the Citizens United decision.

The funding of intentionally deceptive campaign commercials filled with lies and egregious comments without any "official" connection to a candidate.

The complete and utter disregard of truth in campaign statements and commercials, so blatant, for example, that even conservative bloggers are criticizing the GOP Promise to America for its mindlessness.

Everything having to do with the fashion industry, the Kardashian industry, the drug use of celebrities, and the paparazzi.

Those of my friends who still think they can make a difference by "educating the public" with studies and earnestness, in the face of the daily decisions by the policy makers and governments to ignore all of the studies and educational insights. Think GMO salmon for example.

Auto insurance commercials and advertising (good hands around the neck of a General lizard while that lady says idiotic things?)

The endless promotion of great wealth, and the wonders of the wealthy, arguing for more tax cuts, in the face of mounting poverty and unemployment. Who are the media talking to, other than each other.

Jon Stewart's closing comments...

2010-10-31T16:03:00.000-07:00

‘ And now I thought we might have a moment, however brief, for some sincerity. If that’s okay – I know that there are boundaries for a comedian / pundit / talker guy, and I’m sure that I’ll find out tomorrow how I have violated them.
So, uh, what exactly was this? I can’t control what people think this was: I can only tell you my intentions.
This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear–they are, and we do.
But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus, and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.
The country’s 24-hour, political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen. Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the dangerous, unexpected flaming ants epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.
There are terrorists, and racists, and Stalinists, and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned! You must have the resume! Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Party-ers, or real bigots and Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez is an insult–not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more.
The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker–and, perhaps, eczema. And yet… I feel good. Strangely, calmly, good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us, through a funhouse mirror–and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist, and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead, and an ass shaped like a month-old pumpkin, and one eyeball.
So why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle, to a pumpkin-assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, of course our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable–why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution, and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?
We hear every damned day about how fragile our country is, on the brink of catastrophe, torn by polarizing hate, and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done. The truth is, we do! We work together to get things done every damned day! The only place we don’t is here (in Washington) or on cable TV!
But Americans don’t live here, or on cable TV. Where we live, our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done–not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.
Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often something they do not want to do! But they do it. Impossible things, every day, that are only made possible through the little, reasonable compromises we all make.
Look on the screen. This is where we are, this is who we are. These cars. That’s a schoolteacher who probably think his taxes are too high, he’s going to work. There’s another car, a woman with two small kids, can’t really think about anything else right now… A lady’s in the NRA, loves Oprah. There’s another car, an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah. Another car’s a Latino carpenter; another car, a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist obstetrician. Mormon Jay-Z fan.
But this is us. Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief, and principles they hold dear–often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers’. And yet, these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze, one by one, into a mile-long, 30-foot-wide tunnel, carved underneath a mighty river.
And they do it, concession by concession: you go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. ‘Oh my God–is that an NRA sticker on your car?’ ‘Is that an Obama sticker on your car?’ It’s okay–you go, then I go.
And sure, at some point, there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder, and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare, and he is scorned, and he is not hired as an analyst!
Because we know, instinctively, as a people, that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light, we have to work together. And the truth is there will always be darkness, and sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land.
Sometimes, it’s just New Jersey.’

Zombies?

2010-10-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

I am very confused with the way Zombies are presented in the media these days. They don't make any sense, on any level. With new films and a television series coming out this time of year, i think it is time to question our Zombie representations.

For example, how do Zombies become cannibals? Neither of the two base root representations of Zombies offers answers to this question. First, we have the cultural root of Zombie from the voodoo and santeria. The Zombie is a human being who has been given certain drugs to cause a near death trance. Then it is ordered to obey the wishes of its maker/master that may include the murder of other humans, but more likely simply carrying out the activities of a slave (growing out of the history of West Africans in the slave trade). After some time the Zombie is either released from the spell (the drugs have run their course), or is killed outright. Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist and researcher in entheogens, wrote one of the treatises on zombies in "The Serpent and the Rainbow."

Secondly, we have the cultural root of Zombie from cognitive science studies, and the study of consciousness. This root is predicated on the establishment of a base value level of a human being free of any conscious thought, whose sole relationship with the surrounding world is reaction to various stimuli through the sensory organs. The highly theoretical representation is offered as prima facia evidence for a base value that progresses from a null or zero state to one that reacts to stimuli to form conscious choice ("It is argued that the concept of a philosophical zombie, as it figures in arguments designed to refute functionalism or physicalism, contains inherent contradictions"). At no time, in any of the cognitive science literature, has this Zombie committed murder of any beings. One caveat may be that the implied killing of other species exists is predicated on studies surrounding eating and taste.

Thus, in neither the original religious representation nor the scientific-based one, does the Zombie attack, kill, eat, and regenerate new zombies. Zombies are neither cannibals, nor viral agents of marauding attacks and reproduction. So how did zombies become so commonly represented in the media as cannibal viral agents? Why don't zombies eat whatever they ate when they were alive? How many different ways do we have to invent to kill zombies?

The simplest answer would be that we needed an agent that would terrorize human consciousness. Humans preying on humans is a classic archetype born out by millenia of humans killing other humans. The oldest recorded human war was around 2700BC, and certainly long before that (several thousands of years) small groups of humans were killing other groups. So i suppose having a cannibal virus that makes those that are bitten replicate into a cannibal virus, suffering from a leprosy-like deterioration of the flesh, is just another vision of war. But do they have to stagger around until you hit them with something?

In the year 1965....

2010-10-02T14:37:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the best thing i can say about MadMen this season is that it has reminded me of a time in my life that i hadn't thought about for a long time. 1965 was an amazing year for me in so many different ways. When you are eighteen, graduating high school and then going to UCLA with a scholarship, not much could bother you. Getting to see the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were icing on the cheesecake of a dozen magic moments.

The year didn't start all that well considering how it ended. On December 6, 1964, i was in my usual inebriated and high condition at a high school dance. That i was a student body officer didn't mean all that much to me either, but evidently it, and my condition, mattered to other officers and school authorities. Apparently reds and malt liquor were not compatible with a positive and contributing attitude for school support. It didn't matter that in the weeks before, i had stood in front of the assembled masses presenting awards to our school's Olympians; now i was the pariah to be punished. Friday night bled into Saturday morning, and i didn't really come to think much (i really couldn't very well actually) about the whole thing because i had to take the SAT. I don't remember the test at all; i do remember waking up enough to realize that it was afternoon, and i was taking the English subtest with an incredibly debilitating hangover. I think i scored an 1196 or so; not bad for seriously impaired.

So January started off with me having to go to another high school--Reseda was hand-picked by one of the Vice Principals--who thought that he could really punish me by withholding my athletic eligibility for 20 weeks. Reseda was the 1964 City football champions, but had not, up to that point in time, fielded a successful swim team. As i couldn't enroll in all of my classes at the new school, so close to the end of the first semester, i had the option of taking only four periods, one of which was weightlifting with the football team. That proved fortuitous, in that i got to know some of the players and the coach quite well, leading to recruiting for the swim team. It also led to wonderful mornings of drunken revelry under the guidance of the coach, who seemed not at all interested in keeping his "boys" from imbibing their pleasures. I did have another unfortunate run-in with the law right after my birthday in January. Three of us (from my old school) were out and about, cruising, because in 1965 that is what you did late on Saturday nights. We chose to follow a couple of guys to a "witches" house in north Van Nuys (near the Granada Hills border). Apparently, the people across the street from the house were fed up with the constant ruckus and had a standing call to the cops whenever anyone paid a visit. Needless to say my parents weren't thrilled with that either.

One of the deals, i had made with my dad, was that, if i could somehow keep my swimming going, still receive my Navy scholarship, and get accepted at the university of my choosing, then he would purchase tickets for me to see the Rolling Stones at the LA Sports Arena. These goals afforded me some options about how to proceed with my social agendas and still keep up appearances. I had left girlfriends back at my other school (Taft), and i needed to do my best to keep up with them. And i also had new ones at Reseda, one of whom followed me over there due to her lack of conforming to the norms of behavior. I also knew i needed to keep up academically in order to win my bets, which were important to me though not to others in my life. At the end of January, the semester ended, the new one began; and there was a winter prom at Taft, to which i had been previously invited (and allowed to attend).

I got a 4.0 in four classes at the end of the semester (i left Taft with a 3.2 in 6). The new semester required that i take Calc II and Calc I at the same time, a Senior English class, International Relations, Physics 2, and PE conditioning and swimming. The Calc classes posed a problem because i needed Calc II which was offered in the morning, but Calc I was only available after lunch before swimming. As the semester wore on i realized: i could do no work in Calc I, cover Calc II through a homework journal that could be copied from old ones in available files, IR would be easy working with a team of good students, essays were all i needed in Eng, Physics 2 would be tough, but it was first period after pre-school swim workouts.

I went to the Taft dance with Robin Miller, a cheerleader sweetheart, but ended up spending much of it with my neighbor Jerri Adair, a diver friend of my lust idol Sue Gossick. From that one winter prom night, i ended up taking Jerri to allnight grad night six months later, went out with Robin for the end of my freshman and beginning of my sophomore years, and proved that i could act appropriately and respectfully of my old high school. This latter turned out important, because at the end of the year i would be allowed to attend Taft senior activities on campus, without much supervision or taking any classes. And then there were the girls at Reseda, a few of whom were "excused" from their previous high schools for various issues, mostly drugs and behavior. All in all, my life, though shattered by the suspension and arrest, was pretty grand.

I swam before school, went to class, went to the high school swim workouts where i helped coach, and then swam at my swim club in the later afternoon with my brother. Weekends were spent swimming and the usual fake studying. As the school year went on, i got more freedom and latitude to go out again, and enjoy the last few months of that carefree life. My swim coach bribed me with beer, so i had a constant supply as long as i swam well. Reseda was a diverse population of a few surfers, lots of greasers (cars were a huge deal in the Valley in the 1960s), small pods of geeks and socias (socially motivated types), and the usual admixture of new hippies and the weird. Taft was mostly geeks and socias because of the professions of the parents who had moved into that end of the Valley in the 50s (Taft opened in 1960 --you can see a quite impactful list of Taft graduates who went on to fame at the bottom).

I remember quite well, one time, being invited out by one of the girls who had been suspended from Taft and was sent to Reseda. It turned out to be an odd sort of set up, involving a Taft girl who wanted to make her bad boyfriend jealous by going out with me, a bad boy. Her name was Karen Tremaine, and i had actually known her since the 8th grade, when she was "going out" with one of my better friends, Robin Ramondi (8th grade was another bad period of my life, a year i failed school, spent most of my time working in theater and music production running lights and sound, and bootlegging cigs for the juvenile home boys). It finally became apparent what was happening when we were making out at the Zuma beach bonfire, and Karen's boyfriend came up and caught us. All i got was a shoulder shrug from Karen as she went off with him. In some ways i think things never change. It made a lasting impression though, in the sense that the whole green monster of jealousy that i had watched in the Twilight Zone episode, could be manipulated with such precision for an outcome. I vowed then and there to not be jealous, nor envious, of and for others and myself.

During that academic year, i cut school a few times to go to the beach to surf, mostly with the Pierce brothers, whose extended family owned a large mortuary and cemetery business in the Valley. Otherwise i kept to myself most of the time, doing all the usual things a high school kid in the mid-60s would do. None of that looks like anything on MadMen.

to be continued:

the MADMEN: From Dean Moriarty to Cowboy Neal

2009-10-13T02:12:00.000-07:00

Over the last several months i've been trying to figure out what it is i personally don't like about the rave-reviewed TV drama Mad Men. In one comment i wrote:

I am sensing that my disconnect from the show is ingrained in the notion that this “artistic work” plays much more to those who grew up 20 years after this period, than it does for those of us for whom it was our daily lives (certainly the ratings demographics show this to be true--but that is more an anomaly of the basic cable programming schedule i think). I knew a number of young women who were forced (by law and circumstance) to “go off” to those special schools where they would proceed with their pregnancies and give up the babies, to return to “normal” lives. It would be fair to say that a more than a small minority of them were forced to do so because of coerced sex and date rape; though in the early 60s neither was considered outside the norm (sadly and grievously so), nor called anything other than “sex.”

Many of those, that are part of the discipline of cultural studies (across the departments) in the academe and the professoriate in the US, seem to have begun examining the TV series as a powerful and evocative work of fiction. They (collectively) regularly discourse on various underlying plot elements as providing some degree of representational critiques of the core moral dilemmas of both the 20th and 21st centuries (sexism, cognitive and physical disability bias, genderism, victimless and victim perpetuated crimes, ethics, etc.). There appears a fascination with the particulars of these issues (even proposing a hermeneutical scaffold upon which to align plot elements as coherent and consistent within some sort of consensual critical base), and deeper analysis of character than with other such television series. It seems that the they, to which i refer (an interesting amalgam of well-learned, knowledgeable, intellectual curious folk), fit within a demographic construct that is both well known and respected, the 25-50 population of graduate students and professors. Thus it is not easy to ignore, nor disrespect, their humbly given opinions and insights into Mad Men.

Be that as it may, my spider senses have been jangling and tingling for a couple of years now about this popular and honored tv series. It doesn't feel right, it smells bad, it seems to only present a tiny glimpse of the national picture of the period. The producers, either by conscious choice or by staggering ignorance, choose to present only a very tiny and select view of what was happening in the US in 1963. If, as it seems, that some in the academe are promoting the program as a form of cultural apologetic that is representative of the mainstream of the US in that period (as evidenced that the cast of advertising executives and clerks, are part and parcel that is the relationship between corporations and the population), then i think they are sadly mistaken (or at least on par with the critiques presented by Thomas Frank in the issues of the Baffler and his first opus THE CONQUEST OF COOL). As an older adolescent/young adult during this period, living in the Los Angeles region, i can attest that much of what i see on Mad Men is not at all what i was observing in the world around me.

One might ask why my observations might have any relevance to the discourse, given that nearly 9 million US teenagers were experiencing the world in relatively the same way as me (the 1946-1947 baby boomers). I was inordinately blessed with being born into a well-established and well-connected social and cultural network that included the glitterati, literatti, and all other 'rattis' one can imagine. For example, from birth to well into high school i attended weekly services at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, CA (being an altar boy in love or lust with the granddaughter of Gloria Swanson, and her many girlfriends, whose names i remember to this day--Brooke, Torrey, Roxanne, Sandra) on Sundays sitting next to actors and actresses, CEOs and Executive Directors of the most powerful LA corporations and foundations, politicians, and so forth. I started school at the age of three, attending a private academy for gifted and wealthy kids, later to be thrust into a public school filled, for the most part, with the scion of parents (nation's best and brightest) brought together by NASA and the Department of Defense (with elements of Hollywood, the auto industry, and professionals included). I was forced (really coerced) to attend cotillion with many of the same folks as well as others from the gated burbclaves of the economic aristocracy (again, i still remember those beautiful young women especially Alice and Noreen), being an escort for a big time Beverly Hilton Hotel debutante ball evening.

I also grew up at the beach, was a swimmer which led to surfing and to surf culture. I knew that surfers were cool but that greasers' ruled; especially when i was thrown out of my old high school (as a student body officer for being too high on drugs and alcohol during a special student function on December 7, 1964), and had to attend the mid-west valley high school where all the real greasers ruled. Immersion in car culture, at the very peak of the emerging muscle car era, coupled with being a nationally acknowledged athlete (swimming), afforded me the access to fully observing two of the dominant early 60s cultures of US history. The fact that neither is recognized, nor acknowledged, in Mad Men speaks volumes about the disconnect i feel from the show.

~time out~
here are some of my most favorite of my top 50 songs in 1963 in the US markets (including Billboard, American Bandstand, and Wallach's Music City):

Surfin' U.S.A., Beach Boys; Sugar Shack, Jimmy Gilmer and The Fireballs; Rhythm Of The Rain, Cascades ; Hey Paula, Paul and Paula; Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton; He's So Fine, Chiffons; So Much In Love, Tymes; Can't Get Used To Losing You, Andy Williams; My Boyfriend's Back, Angels; Sukiyaki, Kyu Sakamoto; Puff (The Magic Dragon), Peter, Paul and Mary; Blowin' In The Wind, Peter, Paul and Mary; Wipe Out, The Surfaris; I'm Leaving It Up To You, Dale and Grace; Walk Like A Man, Four Seasons; Mockingbird, Inez Foxx; I Will Follow Him, Little Peggy March; Pipeline, Chantays; Surf City, Jan and Dean; Heat Wave, Martha and The Vandellas; Walk Right In, Rooftop Singers; Surfer Girl, Beach Boys

Really! All those surf and drug songs, that were being constantly played across the US. Where are they in the soundtrack of Mad Men? Where is Dylan, Baez, New Christy Minstrels, Everly Bros, early Motown, et al? You must remember that this was the last great American music gasp before the English invasion; and the list also doesn't include the flood of movie and musical soundtracks (OLIVER!) of the period. Will the next season (post JFK country-wide wake) bring a full Beatles, Kinks, Stones, and Dave Clark Five soundtrack?
Here is a short list of movies with soundtracks that ruled the airwaves:

Cleopatra; The Longest Day; Irma La Douce; Lawrence of Arabia; How the West Was Won; Mutiny on the Bounty; Son of Flubber; To Kill a Mockingbird; Bye Bye Birdie; Come Blow Your Horn; 8 1/2; Contempt; Tom Jones; The Birds; Hud; The Great Escape; Shock Corridor; The Servant; This Sporting Life; Billy Liar; The Haunting; From Russia with Love; The Pink Panther; America, America; The Nutty Professor; Dr. No; Charade; Jason and the Argonauts

~time in~

As i was walking home the other night, under the first early morning rise of the Pleiades, i was pondering all that made Mad Men so discomforting to me, why i just feel that i don't like it when i watch it. Certainly the acting, directing and writing are superb; the show is a major artistic success, and has garnered a weekly dose of academic blogging following each episode. Yet the show just feels like sandpaper on my conscious mind, like my brain being shaken almost stirred, as if my bowels were force-fed wood chips instead of rice. What is it that so bothers me??? Then it hit me; wham bam oh gawd man. The characters and the entire construct are part and parcel of all the things i truly hate about America. They are all that is, at their core, bad, for the planet and the human consciousness. We had words for them in the 60s: square, establishment, bummers, head trippers, the man, authority figures, the generation gap, the credibility gap, screwheads, numbnuts, et al, and so far forth. These people, the characters and the corporations that are presented, were, and still very much are, the enemy of the Earth, the planet, the species, the well being.

Wow, i didn't think i felt that strongly at first, but as it sank in i realized it was true. I abhor all that is being presented by Mad Men. It seems to me more of an apologetic and hope-filled rant about how we, as a nation, can do better, than for what it really is; an indictment of a time in this nation when assholes once again stuck it to the people. i don't need that. I know that. And those watching it aren't getting that in a lot of ways. Even after Kennedy died we had some hope; LSD was still available, new frontiers in space and in consciousness, led by scientists, yogis and pranksters, we still felt optimistic. What happened in 1963 pales in comparison with what happened in 1968. Those people on Madison Avenue were evil and still are. I would rather ride the bus and stay on the street (and tracks) than donate $$ to Hilton and Mad Ave.

The Mad Men represented all that we hippies knew was categorically malevolent and evil in our culture. We hated the establishment, and cursed them for laying heavy head trips on us with their manipulation of public perception and their propaganda for the "man" (the government including the administrations of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon). While it took years (apparently) for the "mainstream" to figure out, we knew that the Kennedy's were crooks, liars, and philanderers of the highest order. After Rachel Carson came forward in 1962, we became aware of the disaster that modern consumer culture had perpetrated on the earth. We knew the Doublemint Twins and Breck girls were icons of all that was crappy about America. The response of the media to the Civil Rights demonstrations of the early 60s bespoke volumes for the inherent racism of the establishment mainstream. Where were the blacks in the minds of these advertising ministers, other than being wage slaves to the man???

update (11/01/2009): After watching tonight's penultimate episode of the season, featuring the Kennedy assassination and the struggle to comprehend how "it all changed," i was reminded by a couple of other things from that fateful day. The announcement came to my high school during my class of concert and marching band. We were rehearsing for our upcoming studio album recording; we were one of the top music programs in the State of California, and widely honored. At the moment of the first click of the activation of the school sound system, we were playing a dirge by Holst; i was, at that very moment, playing the Concert Bb-flat double bass clarinet for that piece--the lowest hertz woodwind instrument{good thing i was a swimmer} and was also played the bass clarinet, baritone sax, and bassoon.

We sat quietly, listened intently, and then did the only reasonable thing; we played the entire dirge straight through. Since lunch break was the next period, the administration closed school and we all went home. I ended up at the beach in Malibu, sitting on the sand watching the pelicans do their spacial dances less than six inches above the crests of waves. I think everybody on the beach that afternoon was staggered by the reality. People driving up PCH, heading home from offices or such from LA and Santa Monica, would pull over and get out to walk on the beach. No radios, no sounds other than muffled cries and sound of all the sea birds. The waves and the birds didn't change, they remained immutable in their ongoing lives, teaching us that (as the Jefferson Airplane sang a few years later) the human name doesn't mean shit to a tree. That incredible historical moment really didn't mean anything at all to the Earth and the universe; it was a blip on the shoulder shrug of planetary spin. As we have seen in the last 46 years, in the long run none of those politics seemed to really matter near as much as the Earth.

Glenn Beck on Rush Limbaugh: dog pile of insanity

2009-09-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

Will President Obama "seize power overnight" in a move to consolidate White House control of the U.S. government? That's the fear of Fox News anchor Glenn Beck who discussed the issue at length today with another broadcasting powerhouse, radio's Rush Limbaugh:

If you watch what could only be called the administration's organ - anything involved with GE or NBC - you've got [GE CEO] Jeffrey Immelt on the board of the Federal Reserve, you have him in the Oval Office consulting not only on health care, but the financial situation, and they are an organ.

If you watch MSNBC, I contend that you will see the future because they are laying the ground for a horrible event ... anything from the right, there's some awful event and I fear this government, this administration has so much framework already prepared, that they will seize power overnight before anybody even gives it a second thought.

Limbaugh responded, "I don't think they're going to be able to seize it overnight without anybody knowing about it."

h/t to Ed Brayton

With apologies and gratitude to William H. Gass a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, and author of a book review in the August Harper’s:

In order to prepare private citizens for supporting a militarized police state, a humiliating and painful bullying is generally prescribed. Its aim is to inculcate obedience and create callousness. Leaders must be resolute and heartless, prepared to send any enemy “to their deaths, pitilessly and remorselessly,” as Fox has demanded. Next a campaign of denigration of the chosen opponent is undertaken. This is designed to reduce the humanity of the enemy and to prepare a social web of support for behavior that is basically cruel, immoral, and normally disapproved. It strengthens every aspect of your plans if the society that you represent brings to the project a tradition of paternal domination and abuse, reaching from the family to the office of Rupert Murdoch and to its final station, God. Deep feelings of injury, inferiority, and large reserves of resentment—the fresher the better—are nearly essential. Any widespread unhappiness within your country can then be directed at the selected scapegoat by every available instrument of indoctrination and propaganda. If the enemy can be enticed to return fire, that will help solidify the nation’s resolve. Since a saw’s cut is painful either way it moves, the soldier knows that it is safer to risk death at the front rather than execution in the rear. A general sense of uneasiness helps, as if you knew someone were watching where you walked, reading your mail, and overhearing you talk. This atmosphere of anxiety can be sustained when the agents of power are ruthless and pitiless.

musings on torture...

2009-08-30T15:22:00.000-07:00

CHENEY: Chris, my sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives, in preventing further attacks against the United States, in giving us the intelligence we needed to go find al Qaeda, to find their camps, to find out how they were being financed. … It was good policy. It was properly carried out. it worked very, very well.

WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you’re okay with it.

CHENEY: I am.

Perhaps we might want to follow Dick's logic out through its natural process. Chris Wallace followed up his interview with the erroneous statement facetiously suggesting that it was not coincidental that the US had not been attacked since 9/11. Of course this is a bold and bald lie, as there have been numerous terror-driven attacks in the US since that time, including, among others, a young man entering a high school in CA last week with several pipe bombs (two of which were detonated) and guns w/ ammo. The list of such attacks includes shooters and bombers across the country, albeit, mostly carried out by those on the extremist far right.

So, if we accept Dick's ideas, then we need to begin to pick up all of the far-right wingnuts, starting with high school students, detaining them in special environments and removing any semblance of their rights and protections of the US Constitution. Then we need to torture them (okay let's even call it enhanced interrogation) into revealing the names of all of those who may have talked about, or been supportive of, various terror activities. Imagine we take our 13-17 years old students and waterboard them to tell on their friends so that we can continue this effort until we rid the nation of any possible terror attack. Wow, what an effective and productive strategy. We could save millions of lives long before any of the threatened even knew that they were in any possible danger (probably even before the perpetrators would know they could become perps.

Hell, we could start with the gubernatorial candidate from Idaho, Rex Rammel (or is that Rommel??--hehee), who thought that killing the President of the US would be a good idea. Since that is an act, by definition, one that is most heinous, then with Dick's logic, torturing Rex is an absolute necessity. He might know others who feel the same, who own the weapons and have the knowledge to carry it out, who might direct their efforts towards similar acts of treason and threat to the US. Indeed, we should demand that Dick offer his (and Addington's) services to this effort.

And should our local law enforcement personnel, in their zeal to facilitate the extraction of the most information, torture and harm (even kill {the count is well over 100 now by CIA count}) innocent teens and citizens, we would, again following the rule of Dick, not ever want to prosecute them. They must be free to do as they please in hopes that all possible future threats are eradicated.

Seems to me a poem by a certain Pastor Niemoller would be relevant.

a complete idiot:

2009-06-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

But she is our fucking idiot.

I heard you loud and clear! Thank you to the thousands of people who called and e-mailed me letting me know what you thought about the Majority’s cap and trade legislation. Today, I voted against that tax hike and job killer.

Oh, that amazing mind that is composed of numerous sleazy greedy staff calling themselves Congresswoman McMorris-Rogers (R-WA). She (the summa of too many parts) is known for her inability to actually create anything of substance, relying, in toto, on such entities as the WSJ, FoxNews, AEI, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, et al, to produce her public statements and views on all issues. Today she uncorked the trifecta in talking points of the GOP/FOX alternate reality in claiming her important vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act: it will cost each family thousands (nope); it will make jobs disappear (approx direct increase in employment = 1.7 mil); and it is a tax (energy producers would pay to capture carbon, and will choose to pass costs directly onto customers as they continue to do today anyway to guarantee their continued profitability).

She of course mentions the erroneous data on cost per household, the complete abject lie about taxes, the AEI and API claims to job loss (imagine the petroleum industry losing jobs in a local semi-rural economy with minimal public transportation?), and the rest. Lie lie lie lie and more so, hoping that her Fox breathing minions, only listen to Rush and Bill on the radio, will continue to support her. She refuses to debate anyone on any subject--albeit, debating fifteen staffers (her composite being) at one time might be a bit complicated--because she is essentially clueless and dependent upon the chosen talking points and choice of information (constructed and framed from the "alternative reality") that is at best untrue and without factual substance. At her worst, she spews only lies and misinformation to promote the agendas of big energy, big agra, big pharma, and lots of fascism.

I am sure "she" would completely agree with Glenn Beck when he said:

And these people know it. They are either the dumbest people to ever walk the face of the Earth, which I think some of them are. They are just greedy and just want their own power and their own control, which I think some of them are. Or, they believe in a different system other than the Republic, which I think some of them do. They are, they have exposed themselves as incompetent. They have exposed themselves as wicked. They have exposed themselves, quite honestly I think, as treasonous. I think some of them are treasonous. They have exposed themselves. Now the question is are there enough people in America still that believes in liberty and freedom and the Constitution?

I've been waiting for a long time for the Death of the Amurkin Dream

2009-06-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

At this time of year i hear a great deal from the students i tutor and mentor (across the spectrum of matriculations) about the struggles they are having with balancing reality (Earth) with earning money to acquire even the most basic needs (Amurka). Early this morning, toodling along the highways of Eastern Washington i was shuffling the music deck and up popped a 35 year old Jackson Browne song. Backed by CSN and the Session, along with the maestro of lap steel Mr. Lindley, this song was the statement of that same set of feelings i am currently hearing expressed. Sadly, too many of us are still trying to be happy idiots and asking ourselves to pray for one another.

I'm going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I'll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again
Amen
Say it again
Amen

I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening
I've been aware of the time going by
They say in the end it's the wink of an eye
And when the morning light comes streaming in
You'll get up and do it again
Amen

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the Pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there

Ah the laughter of the lovers
As they run through the night
Leaving nothing for the others
But to choose off and fight
And tear at the world with all their might
While the ships bearing their dreams
Sail out of sight

I'm going to find myself a girl
Who can show me what laughter means
And we'll fill in the missing colors
In each other's paint-by-number dreams
And then we'll put out dark glasses on
And we'll make love until our strength is gone
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We'll get up and do it again
Get it up again

I'm going to be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Thought true love could have been a contender
Are you there?
Say a prayer for the Pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender
Say a prayer for the Pretender

FUCKin' damn it! When Kesey reported that the Dream was Over back in the Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog, i promised myself i would live long enough to see the death of the other dream that has destroyed the planet for generations to come. I am just getting old i guess, but that damn dream is doing its damndest to out survive us all. American exceptionalism indeed, fuck you bastards.

far to the left:pragmatically, psychedelically, and hermeneutically conscious cognitive libertarian

2009-01-12T16:04:00.000-08:00

I have publicly stated on several occasions that i insist that my president would be one who has admitted to taking a relatively large dose (250 to 500 mcgs) of LSD. There are many, many reasons for this, but first and foremost is that the first time i voted for a presidential candidate, my candidate said the following about LSD:

Senator Robert Kennedy, in 1966 said: "Perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that LSD can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly"

Now of course he was assassinated a few hours after convincingly taking the CA primary election of 2008, and LSD had been relegated to the CSA category of Schedule 1 a few months after RFK's remark. Thus we have lived in a nation unrepentant for its abject disregard for the well-being and wellness of its citizenry, and for the cavalier attitude towards murder, torture, and imperial invasions. In these last forty years, one sure thing you could count upon was the repression and massive interdiction into the manufacture, distribution, and use of LSD. At the core of this successful government operation was/is the vigilant awareness that of all the things that could substantively change our society for the better (and away from the disgusting greed, planet destroying, human enslaving, species slaughtering consumer capitalism) was LSD. As a molecule in very small quantities, it is capable of radical shifts in how one thinks about consciousness and the relation of that consciousness with the universe outside of it. Nobel prizes have been awarded for discoveries made; incredible feats of sport have been achieved; and milestones of creative energies revealed--all under the use and influence of LSD (see David Jay Brown's CONVERSATIONS AT THE EDGE OF THE APOCALYPSE).

In describing his vision of how important LSD can be for the future of the planet, Jonathan Ott wrote:

I firmly believe that contemporary spiritual use of entheogenic drugs is one of humankind's brightest hopes for overcoming the ecological crisis from which we threaten the biosphere and jeopardize our own survival, for Homo sapiens is close to the head of the list of endangered species.
We are indeed at the apex of a series of events that require the best and brightest minds, the most creative thinkers and artists to provide divergent and vastly numerous solutions to the catastrophic problems we face living on the planet today. It is beyond hope and reason to tacitly concur with this thought, yet do absolutely nothing to contribute to being part of the solutions. We need to agree that reason and rationality be paramount to the din of verbose, useless, religiospeak during this period. Idiotic acceptance of prophesies spoken by priests, pastors, imans, avatars, etc. concerning the whims of invisible, masculine, anthropomorphic, omniscient energy entities (illusions of deities), only further the planetary degradation and the loss of sustainable habitats for all living (actual real living) entities and species. Pragmatic reason must ascend to levels hierarchically paramount to rhetoric of faith, party, and money. Greed is no different a religion than its servant Mormonism or Scientology.

I wholeheartedly endorse LSD as a therapeutic treatment for living in the US. So rich and powerful a transformer of change it be, that our own government chose to use it as a remedy for curing the Soviet empire in the late 1980s. In the mid-1980s, agents of our CIA and DEA were encouraged to make contact with a large number of LSD distributors, coaxing them to procure large scale weekly purchases for European shipment. Many of these distribution sources were very closely connected (necessary when one is asked to provide up to 15 grams of pure LSD crystal per week) with the manufacturers. This government operation had a two prong agenda.

The first was to flood eastern Europe with Gorby acid (as some of it was labelled) encouraging citizens of Hungary, East Germany, then Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Poland, etc., to declare their personal freedom and independence from the constraints of oppressive and coercive rule. Rising up in these new nations were young adults who could see beyond the constraints of greed and power, and become leaders of creative and substantive change. The second was to gain immediate access to the suppliers and manufacturers in this US, so that when the anti-Soviet operation was concluded the CIA/FBI/DEA could shut down LSD in the US. Both prongs were incredibly successful. Coupled with the draconian drug laws of Reagan/Bush, dozens of the best LSD manufacturers and distributers were incarcerated for 20 to 40 years terms in Federal prisons, thereby securing for decades the potential for the flow of LSD to reach the citizenry of the US. I could make a substantive argument that were it not for the near complete lack of LSD, FoxNews would not currently be able to reach and exist the large numbers of brain-dead it does.

Rising up in this wake of extreme interdiction against entheogens and other psychedelics, while permitting a huge and constant flow of heroin, cocaine, pharmaceutical painkillers and other vicious narcotics to reach the citizens, three groups have made the effort to promote new venues and directions of research. Spawned during this same period of DARE and Just Say No, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and the Center for Consciousness Studies--all have been moving forward with their efforts to fund research and spread the news. Around the world, agencies of governments as diverse as Israel, Brazil, and Canada have been interested in funding and engaging in research using MDMA to reduce PTSD and other similar pathologies. Switzerland has recently embarked on work with LSD for people who are terminally ill and near death, as well as treatment for various chronic pain from migraines. The US has three similar projects ongoing, and others for medical marijuana.

At the heart of these developments is the consensual understanding that citizens of the US are endowed with the inalienable right of cognitive liberty. We are absolutely free to keep our own minds and counsels, without accepting interference from anyone in that regard. Indeed the Bill of Rights is formulated (and the 13th &14th Amendments) on the principle of cognitive liberty. This crosses thresholds and emboldens misguided folks to think that a celebrant of cognitive liberty would accept libertarianism as a path towards political pragmatism. This is decidedly not true. Libertarianism is not about cognitive liberty, it is about property liberty, and at its base is the fomenting of the same dangerous greed and selfishness that is destroying the planet through capitalism. A citizen, knowledgeably informed of the principles of cognitive liberty, would not interfere in any regard with the freedom of thoughts and minds of others, whereas libertarians and other capitalists rejoice in the desire to attribute economic value to thoughts and minds. Do not confuse the two, please.

Insuring the freedom of consciousness and mind, supported by ever more available information and tools to liberate minds through education and consciousness research, and availing these minds the choices of using entheogens is a path to moving forward in hope for a better, more sustainable future. Without free unfettered investigations in how thought processes, under the influence of LSD, can engage interactively with other species, and other holistic systems of planetary interconnectedness. We need our earth to be populated with human beings working at their best in thought mind and deed to solve the critical problems of the upcoming year, decade, and quarter century. Quashing tools, such as LSD, because one is afraid of the consequences of a population suddenly freed from the confines of mind-numbing media messages, only further serves the destruction of all of the planet's species. We are on the brink of creating the greatest period of extinction in the Earth's history. And we are one of the species that are at great risk.

As Terrence McKenna, the profound researcher of entheogens and mystical states, said:

Consciousness is what we're in need of to avoid running off the cliff into armageddon!

airline pilots are raging idiots....

2009-01-11T13:37:00.000-08:00

Over the course of the last year, i have had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time with the flight crews of the commercial airlines of the US. Most of these experiences have been pleasant and highly informative; but there has been one consistent depressing and irritating tone: pilots. Contrary to what most people might believe, the men (and 90% of them are men) are for the most part: white, conservative, former military, FoxNews-watching, misogynist bastards. And worse, they are arrogant, self-centered, solipsistic, fascist, rather racist, pinhead peckerwoods who care only and solely about themselves as elitists, while hypocritically demanding they are all about the safety of others. It is painful to experience, and helps one realize why there is a bullet-proofed locked door between them and the world.

These shit for brains, deeply believe they are some god's gift to the planet, while simultaneously dyssing their flight attendants, their peers from other airlines, and the general public. There are, of course, some rare exceptions (as there are a few female pilots and one or two black ones) but for the most part, the members of the airline pilots associations are every bit the reason we have had to endure the Bush/Cheney administration for so damn long. They never apologize for the delays they personally cause (oversleeping, previous night partying (using their carefully negotiated benefit of claiming FAA exempted exhaustion), taking the airplane itself past its safe zones thus requiring FAA ground inspections after legs {and making the next flights cancel} etc. They never apologize for bad landings, because, well, it is really something they had no control over although they spend inordinate amounts of time in the simulators practicing for all conditions. They will not apologize or acknowledge that passengers might perceive the flying of the plane (take off, sudden altitude shifts, and landing) as glaringly unsafe, because the passengers don't know anything about flying.

But pilots will be the first to complain about anything someone outside the airplane does in their daily jobs, because they are magically (and miraculously) experts in all manner of things: religion, education, politics, social relations, driving, dining, packing, music, logistics, etc. How they gain this expertise, one can never know, but experts they are and people better praise them for that. The hypocrisy of this is staggeringly appalling. I can't begin to recount the number of times i have been told this or that by them, regardless that they: possess light-years-less education, are terrifyingly unqualified, and lack even the remotest period of daily experience that this presumed expertise might suggest. If you carefully read the FAA qualifications for becoming a commercial airline pilot, you discover that they need only be 18 years of age, experienced in a variety of aircraft and simulators, have demonstrated skills and attributes to inspectors and instructors at various flight academies, flown diverse planes of increasing size and power. You notice they don't have to pass any basic literacy tests, nor graduate from universities, nor demonstrate skills in any sort of venues outside of flying a plane.

Pilots are: bigots, idiots, fascists, womanizing misogynists, far-right conservatives. They disdain all that are not pilots, as being lesser people than them (though this often includes other pilots of other airlines). Next time you fly off into the blue, remember these are not the friendly skies, but rather the nightmare asshole ones.

***UPDATE: Much is being made about the pilot of the US Airways plane that was ditched into the Hudson River. He is being hailed as a hero for doing his job; thus demonstrating all the more clearly how the general public has enabled these creeps to become giant-headed fucktards. The pilots--yes there were actually two of them who needed to coordinate actions--followed all of the procedures and steps they had been trained to follow in simulator simulations (pilots retrain, on average, two weeks of each year on simulators programmed to create these sorts of emergency situations). If this pilot is a hero for demonstrating his competency for following the script, there can be no wonder how deep into the quagmire of bullshit the Dick-n-Bush administration has taken the connotations of competency. We are fucked.

far to the left of Obama.....

2008-11-18T17:13:00.000-08:00

It is really quite simple in some ways i suppose. I am, for lack of any better description: tribally and socially cooperativist; a pragmatically, psychedelically, and hermeneutically conscious cognitive libertarian; an economically and geo-politically anarchist; and a deep ecology radical. In all practicality, i think that it is extraordinarily difficult to classify most citizens of the US under the simple polarizing taxonomy of liberal/conservative. Even the sub-labels such as socially conservative liberal or socially liberal conservative speak little of the vast diversity of the self aware citizen. But to reflect upon the 2008 election and the necessary work that must be done, i openly state my conception of my position along the spectrum from which i advocate the change i seek.

Over the next few posts i will try to highlight some insights into my conceptualization and construction of my semantic intent of these categorical descriptions. Together they comprise a composite reflection of axioms upon which i base my choices to produce responses to the world around me. My political actions are necessitated by my principles of cognitive liberty; my cooperativist direct actions to promote social justice for all, grow both from my economic anarchy as well as my commitment to deep ecology. Thus i hold that we as a nation (one comprised solely of one species that seems to revere the capacity to destroy all other species) must radically alter all of our institutions and behaviors in order to insure that the greatest diversity of all surviving species have an equal chance of participating in the future. To achieve this goal, we need to allow our infrastructures to collapse, both into disrepair and into un-usability. The construct infrastructures connotes all aspects of systems that encourage humans to maintain their profound disconnection from the real and natural world around them: transportation routes and mechanisms, electric power grid, internets and IT, industrialized food production and distribution, all education, all governmental entities and operations, health care provision, etc.

James Lovelock postulates that the actual sustainability ratio for the planet among all species indicates that there can be no more than 500 million humans living upon it (he suggests the number may be as low as 250 million). This number, less than ten percent of the current total, cannot live as the vast bulk of them do now, utilizing technological advancements that require the ongoing destruction of all other lifeforms and the planet's carrying capacity to endure. We can either make a substantive choice to actually facilitate our own future multi-generations in some balance/harmony with the greatest possible diversity of other species, or, we let the planet do it to us.

Over the next few days, i will post up some comments and quotations regarding each of these self-referential descriptors:tribally and socially cooperativist; a pragmatically, psychedelically, and hermeneutically conscious cognitive libertarian; an economically and geo-politically anarchist; and a deep ecology radical. I hope that by doing so i encourage others to do the same for themselves. We all need to very seriously consider who we are in relation to all around us. I am not proposing argumentation nor other forms of dysphemistic commentary; i am asking that each of us take some time to reappraise our own lives and thoughts about our role as a member of the Homo sapiens sapiens.

she follows her marching orders well:

2008-09-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

If one were to ask why McMo-Ro continues to spew a steady stream of falsehoods and lies, in order to garner support for her own campaign, and for those of the GOP/Rethuglicans nationally and within the state, one need only pay attention to the party super-boss Karl Rove:

This week, non-partisan fact-checking organizations like PolitiFact and FactCheck.org
have called Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) out for lies in his attack ads against Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). But on Fox News Sunday today, former Bush political adviser Karl Rove dismissed the organizations, claiming that “they’ve got their own biases built in there.” “You can’t trust the fact-check organizations,”

(h/t to Thinkprogress)

here is one example; and yes the misspeaking by Herr Karl is intentional below:

"Well, first of all, I do think that the lipstick remark was an inappropriate and maybe it was unconscious, but it was a deliberate slap at Governor Palin. The only time this word has intruded in recent months in the campaign was in her, you know, self-deprecating remark at the convention. For her to use the lipstick remark less than two weeks after she used it struck me as too much of a coincidence not to have been a deliberate attack."

Of course we know from FactCheck that John McCain used the phrase "putting lipstick on a pig" way back on May 2nd. Herr Rove just wants to make sure that fact checking is simply just not appropriate at any time during this campaign.

she really is a GOP talking point piglet

2008-09-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday i mentioned how abysmal and idiotic the CongresswoMan from Eastern Washington makes herself appear to be. For a little substantive reference background on that, i offer this (keeping in mind that she sure knows what she knows--nada):

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a Bipartisan Energy Summit featuring experts from MIT, Google, Shell, and others. At one point in the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) tore into the energy protest House Republicans have been holding for the past several weeks. This political stunt was meant to demand a vote on oil drilling and “attack Democrats for leaving town” in August “without doing something to lower gas prices.”

After listening all the problems currently facing the country, Whitehouse asked the experts whether anyone thought drilling was the “number one issue” right now. Almost nine seconds went by with complete silence:

SEN WHITEHOUSE: Gentlemen, we’re in the middle of a near total mortgage system meltdown in this country. We have a health care system that burns 16 percent of our GDP, in which the Medicare liability alone has been estimated at $34 trillion. We’re burning $10 billion a month in Iraq.

This administration has run up $7.7 trillion in national debt, by our calculation. And there is worsening evidence every day of global warming, with worsening environmental and national security ramifications. In light of those conditions, do any of you seriously contend that drilling for more oil is the number one issue facing the American people today?

[NINE-SECOND SILENCE]

SEN WHITEHOUSE: No, it doesn’t seem so.

(H/T to ThinkProgess and GetSmart)

But of course, HR McMo-Ro regurgitates her given talking points without the least bit of trepidation, failing to even begin to recognize how idiotic it makes her seem. And this is not the first time, nor will it be the last time during this campaign cycle. More to come i am sure.

she knows how to put lipstick on oily pigs

2008-09-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

September 12, 2008 Energy Update
Energy Pledge
Today, I signed the Energy Rally for American Pledge. I pledge to the American people that I will vote in favor of the American Energy Act, add no earmarks to the legislation and send it to the President for signing, before Congress adjourns prior to the November elections. To find out more about this effort please visit this website.

Lifting the Off Shore Drilling Moratorium
This week I signed a letter to the President requesting he veto any spending bills that include the moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and natural gas exploration. To read the entire letter click here. The American people support increasing our American energy resources by opening up the OCS to oil and natural gas exploration, and we should let the current moratorium expire on September 30th.

In Case You Missed It
I wanted to draw your attention to this article by John Stossel. He makes a good argument that it shouldn't be up to the government to create jobs, specifically "green jobs." Instead, it should be up to small businesses and entrepreneurs. Instead, the government should make it easier to create jobs.

McMorris Rodgers

This will only take a quick fisking of her insanity.

The American Energy Act is the Big Oil bill designed to destroy the planet, especially the oceans around North America, for the purpose of short term (80 year) solution to how to keep the highest profits and smallest lifestyle changes while global climate change trashes all of us. But she doesn't care at all about the people, she only cares that her financial contributors continue to support her and her lifestyle to which she has grown accustomed. Or: have you not heard about the problems in Denver that are costing "the people" tens of billions of dollars not being paid by Big Oil????

Asking Bush to veto such legislation by signing a letter written by lobbyists for her GOP Congressional bosses (you remember she worked directly for Ney, Foley, Pombo, Doolittle, and Hastert before she didn't). Like she has always done, she is the little school girl dutifully obeying her elders and teachers.

John Stossel???? John Stossel???? Need i say more. The man is the embodiment of fabricating lies and misinformation for whomever will pay him the best for such services. His record of untruths and deceit is long, yet on he goes in the best Fox News/ABC-Disney kisses lipstick on a pig's ass tradition.

bring forth the drinking gourd.....

2008-08-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

mmmm… This national debate on lowering the drinking age is an interesting discourse, especially reviewing the muddled mumblings of those of the law and order crowd. For example:

Health and safety experts have reacted with dismay, because raising the drinking age has saved many lives. In 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reviewed 49 studies published in scientific journals and concluded that alcohol-related traffic crashes involving young people increased 10 percent when the drinking age was lowered in the 1970s and decreased 16 percent when the drinking age was raised. The retreat from a lower drinking age translates into some 900 lives saved each year among 16- to 20-year-olds. Those who would argue that other factors, such as safer cars, are responsible should take a good look at numbers posted by Mothers Against Drunk Driving showing alcohol-related traffic fatalities among 16- to 20-year-olds decreasing 60 percent between 1982 and 2006 while non-alcohol-related fatalities increased 34 percent

.

Wow, lives saved. No!! That is the first of many fallacies buried within this stereotypical editorial. No lives are ever saved; it is a philosophical absurdity to suggest one can save a life. We can merely prolong the inevitable death. Death surrounds us all the time, although here in the US we do our best to hide it. And one of the ways we hide it, is to send our 18 to 21 years old kids off to foreign wars where they are killed and maimed by the tens of thousands, invisible to the public eye. And to help them survive, our lovely government and its contractors, provide endless amounts of un-"controlled substances" to the troops, from steroids to amphetamines, from painkillers to mood elevators, etc., et al, along with copious quantities of tobacco and alcohol, to “encourage” the kids (I have been interviewing Afghan/Iraq war veterans, some with multiple tours in-country, all of whom have mentioned the constant, insisted upon, use of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol).

So, let's get this right shall we? Some in this country, especially among those who support the war and the use of our "children" between the ages of 18-21 to sacrifice their lives for others profits, think that lowering the drinking age to the same mark as that by which we say it is okay for our sons and daughters to destroy their lives (and the lives of a million others) is simply not okay. They are glaringly hypocritical and dangerously evil. Ignore them until they offer a more sane and reasonable thesis.

A, B, C,... okay, repeat after me.. A, B, C. got it??

2008-08-19T17:34:00.000-07:00

Even a kitten stuck in a paper bag could follow these three stories (from today's news) to their logical earth-destroying conclusion (thanks to Think Progress):

1) Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is touring an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana in order “to highlight his support for increased domestic offshore drilling.” Although he will not join McCain today, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) promoted McCain’s oil rig visit in an appearance on Fox and Friends this morning. Making sure to note that the drilling platform McCain will visit is owned and run by Chevron, Jindal oddly suggested that the photo-op will “emphasize that drilling alone is not enough” to address America’s energy needs. It should come as no surprise that the McCain chose to visit a Chevron-owned drilling platform, considering that lobbyists for Chevron both fundraise and work for his campaign. The Chevron oil rig McCain is visiting is a joint venture with Exxon, which owns 38.38 percent of the project. Lobbyists for Exxon also work and fundraise for McCain's campaign. McCain's plan to cut the corporate tax rate would result in a $480 million per-year tax break for Chevron and $1.2 billion per-year tax break for Exxon.

2) F. Chase Hutto, a senior Cheney advisor, is the leading candidate to be appointed assistant secretary for policy and international affairs at the Energy Department, the Washington Post reports. Former EPA official Jason Burnett said Hutto is “naturally and philosophically opposed to regulation,” adding, “I can’t think of a case where Chase advocated more environmental or health protections.” Hutto is also deeply opposed to regulating greenhouse gas emissions from cars. As one energy official described in July: “He [Hutto] would talk, for example, about not wanting greenhouse gas controls to do away with the large American automobile. Last month, a U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming report found that Hutto, "along with unidentified individuals from Exxon Mobil Corp. and the American Petroleum Institute," played a key role in the Bush administration's decision not to allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

3) The oil industry is spending record amounts of money this year to protect its interests as Congress considers a barrage of energy bills. According to recent data the industry has spent $55 million on lobbying so far in 2008. In what may be surprising to some, the most recent figures from the Center for Responsive Politics show that the oil industry gives a relatively small sum to individual political campaigns - it's 16th on a list of top 50 industries. When it comes to lobbying - and spending money that goes toward researching, writing and convincing lawmakers to vote its way - the industry ranks fifth. If the spending continues at the current pace, the industry is set to break last year's $83 million record. The amount spent on lobbying by the industry, along with lobbying money in general, has been setting records since 2005. With record gas prices, a contentious fight over energy legislation and a huge election on the horizon it's not surprising the industry spent so much on lobbying this year.

It's the end of the world and we know it, part a-deux

2008-08-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

Dead zones where fish and most marine life can no longer survive are spreading across the continental shelves of the world's oceans at an alarming rate as oxygen vanishes from coastal waters, scientists reported Thursday. The scientists place the problem on runoff of chemical fertilizers in rivers and fallout from burning fossil fuels, and they estimate there are now more than 400 dead zones along 95,000 square miles of the seas - an area more than half the size of California.

The number of those areas has nearly doubled every decade since the 1960s, said Robert J. Diaz, a biological oceanographer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

"Dead zones were once rare, but now they're commonplace, and there are more of them in more places," he said.

Diaz and Rutger Rosenberg, a marine ecologist at Sweden's Göteborg University, have just completed a global survey of the imperiled areas, and their report appears today in the journal Science.

So... oceans dying, teachers carry guns, US Constitution shredded--as Aaron Sorkin wrote for Jed Bartlett: "What's next?"

It's the end of the world and we know it, and i feel...

2008-08-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

After extensive research and discussion with state officials, a small school district in Texas has approved a policy that allows certain faculty members to carry guns on school property at any time. It's the first time such a policy has been approved.

But it gets weirder (of course): In order for teachers and staff to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun; must be authorized to carry by the district; must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and have to use ammunition that is designed to minimize the risk of ricochet in school halls.

My first question: Who will die first, a student, a parent, or a teacher????

This just really pisses me off.

2008-04-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

I have been extraordinarily busy and not able to blog, but this caught my eye. It represents everything that is wrong with our consumer capitalist system in the US. The hidden agendas buried within the article are vile and evil. They can not be allowed to reach our children and grandchildren.

When you review the following online article you discover that there are three very sick and perverted underlying messages being presented.
First, that only young women are of important and meaningful to our society and culture, old women are useless and damaged.
Second, that hippies are dangerous, old, and ugly.
Third, that only through spending hundreds of dollars a month on her image, can a woman be considered of value to her family, husband, and community.

If one were to calculate the glaring insustainability of these make-overs during this recession, where does the donning of faux persona (masks of makeup, dresses to hide bodies, hair helmets requiring monthly maintenance) come in relation to the priorities of gas, food, energy?????

If the one woman truly were an authentic hippie she never would have agreed to this change.

http://www.stylelist.com/style-guide/make-overs-makeover-look-five-years-younger

One of my heroes and mentor has moved beyond this event horizon

2008-01-18T19:05:00.000-08:00

~~for Rim Fay, PhD UCLA Marine Biology, who died on December 31, 2007.

Motivated by the work of one of his mentors, Rachel Carson, Rimmon Fay went on to study the Santa Monica Bay in Southern California. His work in the late 1960s and early 1970s, aligned with his service as an Ocean Lifeguard for the City of Los Angeles, suggested that the Bay was becoming toxified by the increased development, sewage disposal, industrial pollution (poured down storm drains), and other human causes. In Rim's lifetime, the Bay has died for the most part. He watched that happen, observing it every single day, and teaching those of us around him to pay attention to all of those signs and symptoms of a sick ecosystem. He was more than a mentor and hero to me; he lifted 60s environmentalism into the forefront of my 70s activism as i began to become more vocal for other sick and unwell ecosystems around CA and the West. Rim was a patient teacher; one who could stand with you (lifeguarding side-by-side) in a shallow littoral inshore hole along a public beach and point out so many details in the layers upon layers of what could have been, what should have been dense life. "See this... See that" were watchwords that inspired paying even greater attention. Along with Frank Hotchkiss (one of the first regional planners to suggest that thermal and CO2 pollution was going to become our greatest problem), Rim Fay brought education about the preciousness of the ocean environment, and the fragileness of the planet, to the living everyday classroom of a day at the beach. I have been enormously blessed to have had the chance to be taught so well, so early on. Rim will be missed by many, and only in years to come, will others discover how fundamentally important he was to all of our lives in his efforts to protect the Earth. ~~ spyder

From the LA Times January 4, 2008 obituary:

Rimmon C. Fay, a marine scientist and longtime Venice Beach lifeguard who devoted his life to saving the Santa Monica Bay from pollution and other assaults, has died.

A UCLA-trained biochemist and professional diver who collected specimens for biomedical research, Fay focused public attention on industrial discharges of the pesticide DDT off the Palos Verdes peninsula that made fish too toxic to eat and nearly drove the California brown pelican to extinction. He was among the first to call for Los Angeles to halt dumping of sewage sludge, a once-quixotic quest that drew kindred souls in the 1980s who joined with him to launch the movement to clean up coastal waters.

He spent six years as a state coastal commissioner, until complaints to Sacramento leaders about his uncompromising anti-growth attitude and open outrage about damaging coastal wetlands and beachfront got him fired. He was replaced on the panel by a developer.

Admirers often likened Fay to John Steinbeck's friend and drinking companion, Edward F. Ricketts, a pioneer of marine ecology who inspired the character "Doc" in the novel "Cannery Row."

"He was so much like Doc Ricketts," said Dorothy Green, who joined with Fay and others to launch the nonprofit group Heal the Bay. "He earned his living collecting animals for research. He drank too much. He would go out diving at night -- alone."

Fay supplied sea creatures, aquarium tanks and advice during the production of the 1982 movie of "Cannery Row," starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger. His son, Douglas, has a vivid recollection of his beaming father on the movie set: "He was puffing on his cigars. That was one of the best times."

Fay also spent much of his life, after his divorce in 1975, living and sleeping in his laboratory, located first in Venice, then in Inglewood and Port Hueneme.

Far more comfortable in a wetsuit than a dress shirt and jacket, Fay logged thousands of hours prowling the seafloor doing his own research and collecting specimens.

"He has probably spent more time underwater than any man on the planet," said Harold Dunnigan, a former Navy diver and retired Los Angeles County lifeguard who taught Fay how to dive in 1955. Dunnigan said he could easily out-compete Fay in swimming contests, but underwater, few could keep up with him. "He was at one with the ocean."

Over a span of 40 years, Fay made four to six dives a day, mostly collecting live sea animals for his business, Pacific Bio-Marine Labs. He would whisk the animals to meet planes departing nearby Los Angeles International Airport to biomedical researchers at universities worldwide.

His live specimens were used to study human nerve cell damage as well as to develop weapons against tumors and to concoct a non-addictive pain reliever.

Fay supplied sea hares, Aplysia californica, to Columbia University neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize for research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons, said Janet Fay, his ex-wife, who lives in Salinas, Calif.

Fay celebrated the contributions his marine creatures made to mankind, but often lamented the disservice that man had done in return to sea life and undersea habitat.

"They've dumped everything in this bay except radioactive waste," he once complained to a Times reporter.

Although he saw some improvement in recent years, Fay was disappointed at the long-term trends that had transformed Southern California waters from a major fishing area into an industrial dump.

He talked about the burden of knowing how the bay looked more than 40 years ago, and how it appears today.

"You spent your whole life around the ocean, you develop a sense of responsibility to the environment. If you don't respond to your convictions, then what kind of person are you?"

Born July 22, 1929, in Santa Monica and raised in Venice, Fay remembered his father, a recreational fisherman, reeling up barn-door-sized halibut from the bay at a time when boys wading into the surf at Venice Beach could still see both their feet and darting fish.

Fay put himself through graduate school at UCLA in the mid-1950s by working as a lifeguard, a part-time occupation that he continued until 2001. He also paid for schooling by collecting sea urchins and other critters for researchers at UCLA, where he earned a doctorate in biochemistry in 1961, and later for colleagues at USC, where he did postdoctoral studies in chemical oceanography.

Fay and other marine scientists over the years noticed a retreat of Southern California's kelp forests and depletion of various types of fish and shellfish. They debated the reasons for the declines, ranging from poisoning, smothering by sediment, loss of coastal habitat to development, or excessive fishing and harvesting.

When government scientists found extraordinarily high levels of DDT in fish near Palos Verdes, they leaked the documents to Fay, who brought them to The Times and other media outlets, said Craig Barilotti, a marine ecologist who worked with Fay over the years.

The public splash was the first step in a campaign that eventually ended the dumping of DDT by Montrose Chemical Corp. in Torrance into the county sewer lines that discharged into the ocean near Palos Verdes.

Fay helped draft the California Coastal Plan, which was the basis for the law that governs the California Coastal Commission. "He was a rigorous, cantankerous guy who brought great scientific knowledge and integrity to the table, and I loved him for it," said Peter Douglas, the commission's executive director.

Over the years, Fay pointed an accusatory finger at Los Angeles for poor sewage treatment and at Southern California Edison's nuclear power plants at San Onofre and other industrial dischargers that were, as he saw it, choking sea life with pollutants.

"He was always breaking new ground, pointing out new problems," Barilotti said.

Fay often showed up to testify before public hearings carrying fish covered in tumors or toting other evidence from his underwater surveys.

"He was a whistle-blower," Barilotti said. "You make a lot of political enemies that way, and a lot of developers and others tried to discredit him. To myself and a lot of other people, Rim was an inspiration."

Concluding Remarks (2003 paper at UCSB)
by
Robert Roy van de Hoek
Marine Biologist, Field Biologist, Geographer, Naturalist

Rimmon Fay is a fine scientist that has enlightened the public about the valuable coast for marine life in southern California. He has blown the whistle about the danger of pollution and over-development in southern California. I have met him now five times in the last two years. I was fortunate to spend a day in the field at Ormond Beach looking at sand dunes, wetlands, lagoons, beach and seashore. He cares deeply about the coast and ocean. And he is concerned with our pollution of the environment.

There are so many observations that Rim Fay made in this 1972 paper that have a "seer" aspect and his predictions and concerns are ring clear today, 30 years after his report. For example, recommendation number 3 essentially calls for the removal of Rindge Dam on Malibu Creek.

In 1982, Rimmon Fay was asked to write a few words for a new book that has gone through several printings and a new second edition in 1996, called Common Wetland Plants of Coastal California. The author is a good friend of Phyllis Faber, who I also have met at several California Native Plant Society meetings and on a botanical field trip, where I had lunch with her on the Eureka Valley Dunes, located north of Death Valley. Rimmon Fay said the following words about Phyllis Faber's book, published by Pickleweed Press:
... a succinct, explicit, informative guide to an important subject. There is no question but what such a guide is needed, will be useful and will be well received." The book has other quotes by other notable scientists and environmentalist together with Rim Fay's words. Some of the these include Wilma Follette of the California Native Plant Society, Michael Fisher of the California Coastal Conservancy, and Susan Cochrane of the Department of Fish and Game. The title below Rim Fay's name reads: California Coastal Wetland Coalition [and] Former Coastal Commissioner.

I found an eclectic acknowledgement of Rimmon Fay, while he was student at UCLA, that was written and published by Dr. Richard Boolootian at UCLA, and appeared in the Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences (1958).
Specimens of Strongylocentrotus franciscanus collected from Malibu, California, by Mr. R.C. Fay, graduate student at the University of California at Los Angeles, included one with a single, relatively large barnacle, Balanus tintinabulum, attached directly to the test sample, and smaller barnacle of the same species attached to the larger one.

Priceless truth arrives in Ed Naha poetic justice

2007-12-18T09:23:00.000-08:00

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??

2007-12-11T10:31:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-21T11:15:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-10-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-10-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-18T08:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-19T06:37:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-16T07:17:00.000-07:00

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:

2007-05-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

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

Totum dependeat;

2007-04-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

I received the following comment post from Chris Clarke, to a comment of mine i had posted on his Creek Running North blog site:

spyder, I stand in awe. You can work Karl Rove into a discussion of anything.

Now i got to ruminating on this with regards to what i had said, what Chris has said, what i was feeling about the American Soul and what Chris has been feeling about his soul. For those who don't know, Chris has spent the best part of the last six months or so in deep grief over his beloved dog Zeke, first as Zeke got sicker and sicker, and then through the horrible choices of putting him down, and then lost for a while in the despair and bowels of grief over his closest friend's death. Indeed nearly 85% of all of Chris's post on the Creek in the last six months have been about Zeke, filled with Zeke, lamenting Zeke, including several mentions in the past week.

So perhaps my mentioning of Karl Rove has an analog. Karl is the hideous malignant tumor on the spiritual soul of the this nation. He is getting more and more enlarged, more and more dangerous with his power, and his control over this nation. If we do not interdict quickly and effectively (and very soon) this cancer known as Karl will devour this nation, this American Soul. It has already poisoned so much of our body politic, and has matasticized throughout the core structures of the Federal government. Rove is the AID's virus of cancers, hiding as pieces of his tendrils are cutout/cutoff, always able to avoid even the merest taint of contact with attempts to remove him and his disease. Karl is the death of this nation.

And for that i grieve, deeply and passionately. I grieve more for the American Soul than Chris does for his dog. I love this country, i love: its people, its incredible natural beauty unlike that of any other continent on the Earth, its music and cultural vitality, its remaining indigenous populations, its specialness and uniqueness of development, its never ceasing to amazeness. But it is dying at its core. It is spiralling into a pathology that can only lead to death. I grieve for all of the generations of children across the Earth who have, through media, been exposed to the virus that is killing this country: the one party corporate fascist rule of the neo-feudal lords of capital, hell bent on killing America and pillaging the Earth. I am horrified that i feel this way, and realize that i will never not see that happening for the rest of my life.

So yes Chris, i do seem to mention it all the time. Think of me as someone like yourself, grieving ever too deeply for a lost loved one.

Frumpy: "Look at me, I am stupid"

2007-04-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

When the first three paragraphs include an outright lie, a strawman deception, a heroic call to kill, and it comes out of the mouths of the American Enterprise Institute, you know you are dealing with serious and dangerous idiocy. It is either that, or David Frum is laying claim to his street cred as a replacement for Tony Snow in the White House. I can hear the following read more like: "Hey Karl, pick me pick me; i am just as evil and deceiptful as Ari, Scotty, Tony, and Perini!"

"This war is lost." No, that was not said by some angry protester, not by some gloating terrorist, but by the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid, in remarks to journalists Thursday.
That's the same Harry Reid who voted only three months ago to confirm General David Petraeus as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
Gen. Petraeus appeared before the Senate--Reid's Senate--to describe a new strategy in Iraq, backed by almost 28,000 additional US troops. Petraeus detailed his plans and warned he would need at least six months to achieve success. Reid voted to give him that chance. So did 80 other senators: Petraeus was confirmed 81-0.

Clearly that was not what Harry Reid told the President of the United States. But these folks have never yet bothered to be honest, to report facts, or to even bother to appear to be truthy. No their biggest and most zealous concerns are to spew out volumes and reams of propaganda, hoping some might stick to the inner vacuum walls of their remaining constituents, the complete and other brainless who have no capacity to tell the difference and will do as they are told. I won't even bother fisking this, given that this has been done for nearly a week now, each time some lying scum is told by Rove to push the story. I am still not sure how a vote for a confirmation equals a vote for war or the surge, but then again, we are dealing with the AEI, a branch of the Cheney/Rove machine, more properly called the Amercian Empire Instrumentality.

That AEI would respond to the puppet strings and put out yet another column attacking Reid, attacking Democrats, and blithely claiming the war is militarily winnable (in the face of their own board members saying otherwise: Kissinger et al), is not surprising. It is most revealing. The bosses are frustrated that they cannot sway the people to accept more killing and maiming of US citizens for the protection and accumulation of wealth by the very rich. The only people who directly benefit from more war are the war makers and the energy companies. It is that simple. Each and every time you hear a voice call for war, they are protecting the profit of their handlers. Frum is just another marionette in the throes of deep passionate love for Karl.

Hi, i'm George Will and i'm a fruking idjiot..

2007-04-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

George you ignorant pompous bald-headed corporate ho! Is it possible you could get anymore blatantly obvious about your desperate need for corporate cash donations??? Do you really need that $10K from Exxon to support that domineering chubby bitch of a wife??? What does what i say have to do with anything?? Well let's use your column as an example of puffy nothingness skewed as propaganda for corporate overlords.

"Ben & Jerry's ice cream might be even more sinister: A gallon of it requires electricity-guzzling refrigeration, and 4 gallons of milk produced by cows that simultaneously produce 8 gallons of manure and flatulence with 8 gallons of methane. The cows do this while consuming lots of grain and hay, which are cultivated by using tractor fuel, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, and transported by fuel-consuming trains and trucks."

Your self-imposed ignorance is commendable, in that your readers are supposed to assume that you have some degree of intellect. Clearly you are suggesting that you know nothing about the products that B&J produce, that you are completely void of capacity to evaluate even the most basic terms of the greening of businesses and the processes of sustainability, and you don't give a rat's ass about saying anything other than that which will generate the largest cash contribution from your corporate neo-feudal lords. But, as you so well model, i digress.

Suggestion: read up on organic farming, so that you realize that milk can and is produced in Vermont organically. First, this means none of those "cides" you list are used. Second, reasonable and intelligent farming practices have been in place in Vermont, and recommended by B&J, for many years, and among these are the use of non-till drill grain growing and recycled compostible animal waste products. Transporting is an issue, and most of us who really do love our B&J prefer to purchase locally-created products, that are every bit as good but with less costs for transportation and storage. These products, like B&J, use post-consumer recycled paper packaging, 100% recycleable PETE 1 seals, non-toxic and non-hazardous inks, and locally produced ingredients. All of this is a boon to the economy but that obviously would never be your point??

Further, unlike your pompous pimply butt, we use alternative sources of energy and power generation, none of which negatively impacts the Earth's atmosphere--but certainly requires increased funding. Oh damn, sorry i mentioned the improved economic benefits again; i really didn't mean to. And last but not least, B&J and other similar local products are just that: locally manufactured products. This means we don't import manufactured goods and processes from slave labor countries to which most of your corporate overseers have shipped all of the means and labor of production. Once i again i dare to mention the improved economic offsets from greening sustainable life practices. Damn it George. Get off the toilet.

more on our impending economic collapse

2007-04-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

Here for now i will just mention the development of the legal canon entwined with capitalism. When i was barely a teen (1959) my father (the rocket scientist who tried his damnedest to turn his children into good little randian objectivists; he got 2 out of 3 but not me) said that if i learned nothing about economics, i needed to understand that for capitalism to survive (but not thrive) it required across the board growth of no less than 2%, and that wasn’t taking into account the growth of population.

He, with surprising patience unusual given his common demeanor, explained how each little chunk of a dollar was taken out by this or that strand of the system:

~this bit for public infrastructure that goes to private corporations;
~another bit for public education that goes 50/50 to people and corporations who are contracted to provide the materials, buildings, etc.;
~this bit over here goes to public safety services and the corporate contracts that facilitate those systems;
~a chunk goes to corporations for supplying the essential and basic needs of living~ food, water, sewage, trash removal, vehicles, energy, etc.;
~another chunk gets snipped off as savings accounts to increase the financial capabilities of corporations to further develop the system;
~and so forth and so on.

His point was quite simple, if you only have so much of the dollar, then none of these systems grow. If they don’t grow, they end up having to cannibalize one another in order to exert their need for their 2% to survive. What we have, he said, is a nationwide set of laws and codes that protect and facilitate a schema in which no one entity is freed from its pursuit to increase its profitability. Those corporations that service governments (and ultimately every single dollar of tax revenue makes its way to corporations either through contracts for services or from purchases by employees) pressure governments to grow; seen most dramatically in the desperation of state and local govenments to increase their property and sales tax populations. Those corporations that provide essential needs pressure governments to free up salaries and other funding (to those other corporations) so that more can be spent on the needs (and presently huge sums need be freed up for the senseless yet necessary waste of consumer discretionary spending). And so this goes on.

Should any one aspect of this schema start to fall behind (think your little corner market or other family-owned business) it must be removed as one would remove a cancer. It becomes a drain on the profits of others. Problems lie when large corporations discover that they have extended themselves well beyond needing that 2% (and for the BAT sake of it all, churches are financial corporations who have a desperate need for cash all the time–10% tithe my ass), and they then layoff employees or close up shop altogether. The waves of this shut down smash down first against the local infrastructure and companies; loss of tax revenues deflate the local economy which loses its carrying capacity to hold other jobs and services, and so forth. And i am not even going to mention (well this is a mention) the defrauding of people by large corporations. My dad’s overall point, to a 13 years old, was that i needed to look for a job that would be needed in the long run; one that would not experience wholesale cutbacks or layoffs. {My brother and sister always took his advice. Me, i preferred to study religion and philosophy.}

Governmental systems throughout the US are fighting against this loss of revenue. It matters because that revenue goes to corporations to keep them viable. If we cut this or that govenment service, especially employees and resource materials, we are removing funds from the community’s businesses and corporations. Citicorp announced a month ago that it was laying off up to 15000; today it announces it is buying a Taipei Bank?? Go figure how that impacts US communities. The other pressing issue can be summarized by Coke/Pepsi (never one to promote one against the other) and Levis. The US officially exports Coke and Levis (and thousands upon thousands of other products), but the US does not manufacture these products for export. In fact, the US imports much of the materials and resources for these products (we actual import Levis). No, we export ideas, licenses, copyrights, patents. How long can the exporting of intellectual property be supported by intellectual production (mining the minds of the children to the very end)??

Blogging Against Theocracy--cross post..

2007-04-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

the following is cross-posted at the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Party Now website. Blogging Against Theocracy or BATshit protection is very important, do it!

Give me cognitive liberty and give me my freedom

For more than a decade, I have been a proponent, member, supporter, contributor, advocate, and activist for various groups including MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), and CCLE (Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics). At the core of my participation and activities has been my deeply held conviction that human beings share one absolute and essential core liberty: the freedom to think for themselves. Enlightenment philosophers, the “Founding Fathers” of the US, hell even Maslow—all recognized and acknowledged that the one constant in the expression of all human rights and liberties is cognitive freedom.

Among the various historical attacks upon cognitive liberty has been the repression of, and coercive violence against, freethinking by religious authorities. If the Spanish Inquisition doesn’t pop into your head, or the Taliban, then I suppose you are blissfully unaware of exemplars of these sorts of perpetrations and crimes against humanity. Religious leaders in the United States in the latter half of the 1800’s were able to successfully lobby Congress to pass laws prohibiting American Indians from celebrating and participating in their own religious activities. And so it goes on, and on.

Though I am not intentionally channeling Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (both for whom I have deep respect), I propose that we do a grave injustice to the minds of our forthcoming seven generations when we allow, indeed insist, that religious leaders in the US demand that they be free to inculcate their theocratic beliefs in the minds of the children.

Hidden in the beauties of Babylon
The civilized behavioral notoriety
The more evil the empire
The more paranoid the society
Building to the new world order
We’re expected to carry the stone

Emperors and the feeding Class
Human beings being used up fast
The miners keep on mining
Intelligence is the mother-load
Imagination as an energy source
In this predators way of dining

Defining how and what we think
As we’re led to the way to believe
Conditioned reaction
We call thought
Our reality rides
In how we perceive

In the ways of being lost and alone
Who runs from their doubt and fear
In the mask of everything’s normal
Who’s not feeling or seeing too clear

Could be we’re being programmed
Anyway our spirit bleeds
All over our lives.
Our lives become fuel
For predator needs

Hidden in the beauties of Babylon
The civilized behavioral notoriety
The more evil the empire
The more paranoid the society

This John Trudell poem is my daily reminder that we cannot, must not, continue to allow our children’s minds to be mined for power and energy, especially by religions. It is the propagation and perpetuation of sectarian religious ideologies and creeds that are being mined from the minds of our nation’s children. They are fodder in the future battles of theocratically-driven agents whose sole duty and purpose is to expand their congregational flocks to control the destiny and future of the planet. Convert the children and they will become the soldiers of the future wars, guided not by service to their inalienable rights, but rather by their sworn allegiance to religious authority.

Do I really need to mention the Academy Award nominee documentary: JESUS CAMP? Good lordy, the promo enough should freak you out:

At a summer camp for Evangelical Christians, children have their faith reinforced and their ideology honed by the camp’s founder, Becky Fischer, whose stated objective is to “take back America for Christ.” Under Fischer’s tutelage, the children speak in tongues and pray for the appointment of pro-life Supreme Court justices.

This is just one particularly vulgar and obscene perversity in the assault on the minds of the children. It is not, unfortunately, an isolated case. Legal teams encourage religiously misguided youth to stage actions to establish claims against local and regional governmental agencies, particularly schools, hoping to erect protocols and precedents reinforcing the theocratic intentionality. Pastors and corporate ministers shout from their pulpits (bully ones on broadcast and cable networks) inflaming the faithful to push their children towards belief in some rapturous salvation, thereby increasing the willingness of the children to commit acts of violence and hideously-vile intolerance.

The children are being mined. We are allowing these sub-humans to drill into their minds and extract political, social, and economic power from them. And as with any other mining process, we create the waste and tailings. Children intentionally left behind, labeled with various syndromes and disorders simply because they refuse to be drilled to their spiritual and psychological cores by zealots bent on accumulation of power and wealth. I am pretty sure I read once that that guy Jesus said something about protecting and keeping from harm the children. Well his acolytes are doing a really terrible job at that.

i wonder wonder wonder who: who really cares?

2007-04-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

the following material has been cross-posted in this commentary thread at WAAGNFNP

I now, without too much hestitation, paraphrase from three posts that seem to have encouraged others to shoot me with incredible flaming textual arrows. (Disclaimer {in snuggling parentheses} Alas, the views are mine and mine alone, and should not reflect those of any others with whom i may or may not be associated, whether in or out of this specific blogsphere.)

a) Political assassination is an extremely efficient and effective method for enacting substantive political change in the short term. It is so useful that most powerful political forces, corporate security apparati, and others, find themselves drawn to it on a regular basis (our own local law enforcement have been retrained to use head shots rather than center of mass shots to bring down suspected felons). It is my view that such tactics would facilitate necessary and fundamental change in the US, both at the governmental, and at the private corporate level (the Hydra notwithstanding).

b) Ted Kaczynski was a crappy strategist who misused his talents by targeting unimportant individuals, and inflicting (given say the US military in Fallujah, or Afghanistan) minor damage when all is considered. His considerable skill at packaging woulda/coulda/shoulda been better used to interdict at key structural points in the financial and utility stream. Not being specific (yes that might trigger threat alerts wouldn’t it, which would be bad for centrist thinking types), the list of those who charismatically lead organizations that are pathologically dangerous to the soul of America is not long nor obscure.

c) The PDF (you all know the correct acronym, but it automatically triggers one of those special tags leading this thread to “them” who want to violate our constitutional rights) wastes inordinate resources on trivialities; they could much more impactfully have chosen targets that would make profound substantial differences. Car dealerships, housing developments, a few miscellaneous pieces of equipment—these just don’t carry the message, nor the import, of something deeper and more direct. Wayback in my Mr. Peabody machine when i was in the Navy (late 1960’s deskjob, as i was already considered a troublemaker–hey the Navy paid for me to go to the Monterey Pop Festival, not my fault i ran into that Senator’s son there), i did a little work on developing plans to protect US infrastructure from internal attacks. To this day, the systems are ever more vulnerable to casual malicious and vandalizing attacks, and not at all secure from potentially deeper, more-focussed threats.

My motto for the last 40 years has been: “Moderation in the extremes of excess is intelligent!” Of course that had more to do with the sixties than anything else, but over time it lent itself to ever more expanded realms and connections in my life.

That said, my point regarding political violence is that unless one is prepared to do it, mentally and physically, they will not be prepared when the police states manifest there own version (and they do so all the time as we are doing so as a nation against other nations). Those on the other side usually end up in cattle cars heading down the tracks to the next reservation. State-sanctioned political violence is still political and violent, and considerably more deadly. The US has historically been a nation bent on using political violence to achieve its agendas, especially quests for territory and resources. Kent State and Jackson State were not anomolies in the long run of the use of physical force to instill coercive order. Corporate use of violence is also a mainstay of this great nation; we need only revisit attacks on mine workers and their families for that one (and too many other such events sadly said). I always keep this short list handy to remind me of just how often the tactic of political assassination is used. Perhaps knowing so many families of disappeared in Chile and Argentina has twisted my thinking.

The US is the number one purveyor of physical violence on the planet, we sell more weapons to more people than the next 12 nations combined (and that ratio is becoming even more unbalanced); large purchasers include China, Egypt, and India. The far right, right, and most of the center, seem to have no problem with this. Indeed, they embrace it as part and parcel of their version of what is patriotic and righteous. From where they view, it is great for business, great for the economy, and great for the country.

It has always been the nature of the advocates for liberal democracy and human rights (the left) to oppose this. The essential problem in opposition is that the right has no problem using weapons to defend their use of weapons. Most of the center and most of the left refuses to do so. As a population, this country is excessively innured to violence; witness MSM entertainment programming that celebrates it. That in and of itself seems to me to be a form of political violence.

Indeed the left tolerates all manner of coercive threats and behaviors, particularly in our public education environments and in our law enforcement/criminal justice system. When i moved away from LA in the late 1970’s, my friends and i already understood that the streets of that cosmomegapolis were merely a battleground between gangs, some in blue or khaki uniforms, others in red or blue bandanas. It would not be too far off the mark to suggest that had the gangs in uniform acted less like gangs and more like civil servants, less gangs would have been developed. Recent FBI and DHS studies say LA County has more gangs per square mile than any other metropolis.

I don’t think there is any real answer at the moment. It will come down to the battles over water, safe havens from climate disrupted environments, access to food and energy, and the struggle to make it to another day. And all that will be happening in the US, as it will across the planet.

L'AG è un liar

2007-03-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

How long, how fucking long can this go on??? The people of the US are either woefully disinterested in the health and wellbeing of their nation, or so overwhelmingly consumed with their own day-to-day surivival, that they just cannot possibly care that:

The President of the US has been proven to be a liar
The Vice President of the US has been proven to be a liar
The Attorney General of the US has been proven to be a liar
The Republican Senate leadership has been proven to be liars
The Republican House leadership has been proven to be liars
The Secretary of State has been proven to be a liar
The Secretary of the Interior has been proven to be a liar
The Secretary of Education has been proven to be a liar
The head of the EPA has been proven to be a liar
The head of NASA has been proven to be a liar

When we this end?? When will the people say enough?? When will these vile, evil, horrible human beings be held accountable?

On a side note, at least eight times during his interview with Jon Stewart, former ambassador to the UN John Bolton explicitly lied. He lied so authoritatively and dictatorially that his arrogance at doing so was all the more insane and socio-pathic. Bolton is no different than those others listed above. They have no compulsion to be honest and forthright; they make Goebbels look like an advertising executive.

GNF--GooglebombingNowForpeace

2007-03-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

Cut and paste this:

From tigtog:

This is a crosspost to effect a Googlebomb, correcting an injustice against a fellow feminist blogger.

Jill Filipovic, who blogs at Feministe and Ms. JD, is a NYU law student who has been the subject of cyber-obsession on a discussion board allegedly populated by law students. The discussions regarding Jill Filipovic (and many other female law students) are sexist and sexual in nature, rating the women’s physical attractiveness and fantasising about sexual contact, both consensual and non-consensual. Neither Jill Filipovic or any other of these women contributed, or gave their permission to be discussed, to the discussion board in question.

Jill Filopovic’s name and class routines etc have been regularly posted to this board, and at least one of the pseudonymous board-members claims to be Jill Filipovic’s classmate. Photos that Jill Filipovic posted (with full rights reserved) to an internet photo-storing and sharing site have also been posted to the sleazy discussion board without her permission. This is a horrendous invasion of Jill Filipovic’s privacy, a violation of copyright law, and calls the ethics and character of the alleged law-students participating in these discussions on the discussion board into question.

A major side-effect of an already nasty situation is that the sexist, objectifying cyber-obsession threads come up on the first page of internet search results on Jill Filipovic’s name. To an inexperienced user of the internet, it may even look as if Jill Filipovic and other female law students chose to compete in these Hot or Not rating competitions, instead of having their pictures posted without permission.

This post is an attempt to balance those internet results to point to the significant writings of Jill Filipovic instead, using the Googlebomb tactic and also linking this post to social networking sites (eg. del.ici.ous, Stumbleupon). Please feel free to copy any or all of what I’ve written here to your own blog in order to help change the top-ranked search engine results for Jill Filipovic. If you don’t have your own blog then please at least link to one of Jill’s ~~this~~ post[s] listed below at your preferred social networking site and give it the tag “Filipovic" (as well as any others you think appropriate).

I have linked to these sites in this post:
Jill Filipovic’s bio page at Feministe
Jill Filipovic’s blog posts at the Ms. JD blog
Jill Filipovic’s article about these scummy lawschool sleazebags at Feministe
Jill Filipovic’s article at Ms. JD: When Law Students Attack

If any of the other female law students stalked by the same sleazy site wish to copy this text with names altered, you hereby have my full permission to do so. All other rights reserved. (C) 2007 tigtog

Si hoc memenum legere potes

2007-03-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

as the blogsphere goes; books read appear in bold.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
The Cyberiad or Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
Illuminatus!, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
Colossus, D.F. Jones
Planet of the Apes, Pierre Boulle
War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
Jack of Shadows, Roger Zelazny
The Lathe of Heaven. Ursala LeGuin

Interesting subtexts for TV dramas...

2007-03-11T11:36:00.000-07:00

Last friday evening, two different TV dramas, on two different networks, from two different corporate producers, each had a similar subtextual construct as the bases for the episodes. And in neither case was this construct mentioned in any media whatsoever, as evidenced by the two following summaries.

http://www.tv.com/las-vegas/heroes/episode/958574/summary.html?tag=ep_list;ep_title;16
http://www.tv.com/numb3rs/democracy/episode/985690/summary.html?tag=ep_list;ep_title;17

So why would i use my blogspace-time to mention this??? Well, quite frankly, it rather blew my mind. You see, this subtextual construct was that very rich people with extraordinary economic and political power are literally free to do whatever they desire to further their goals and intentions. On the episode of Las Vegas, the wealthy sociopath drugged and kidnapped a female for his personal sex slave, alluding to the fact that he had been doing this for a very long time, and that no one could really stop him from doing so. On the episode of Numb3rs, another billionaire manipulated and controlled an election through electronic hacking of central tabulators ostensibly to dominate CA election results and insure that he determined the future of national and international policy (with his fellow plutocrats). To accomplish this he used pawns, puppets, and syncophants, then had them killed, and then bragged that he was essentially untouchable.

Plutocrats and oligarchs are beginning to exert their political control and will over much of the planet. As neo-feudal lords of capital they are beyond the scope of laws and consequential forms of justice as retribution for their heinous actions against all species. Flaunting this on tv, as part of dramatic series, only further serves their agendas, brazenly challenging the norms by which national and international societies conduct themselves. Political power in Russia, for example, is being consolidated in aligning plutocrats and oligarchs under one single strand of feudal authority. Those that step out of line, and especially those that try to report on the processes, are being marginalized, imprisoned, and killed. The US plutocrats are firmly supportive of abhorrent totalitarian regimes in the Middle East, to further purge discontent and threats to their power. The US is engaging Iran because of the dependency of the oligarchy on super light, and light crude oil traded in US dollars. Ever onward is the push to privatize the services of government from prisons to education, from social services to healthcare, from public works to military. Privatizing these systems imbues the corporate lords with immense power and removes the threat of consequence and justice.

Update: News today reports that Halliburton is moving its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai. Essentially this puts the company, and its board, in an extradition free zone, where Cheney and his cronies can go hide out the rest of their lives in the most stupendously outrageous region of conspicuous overconsumption on the planet. Of the 900+ billionaires in the world a full 46% of them have personal properties in Dubai, a nation protected by huge private security forces armed with the latest and most sophisticated of military technologies. Go figure.

Update #2:Time’s Karen Tumulty comments on Halliburton’s plan to move its headquarters from Houston to Dubai: “Is this about tax breaks? Getting beyond the reach of congressional subpoenas? And what about all that sensitive information that Halliburton has had access to? At a minimum, reincorporating in Dubai would mean that Halliburton will be paying less taxes to the U.S. Treasury, even as it collects billions from government contracts.” She also reports, “Henry Waxman is already planning to hold a hearing on this, an aide tells me.”

just a thought

2007-03-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago, i read an essay by a medical doctor describing the heart disease issues with VP Dickhead. I can't remember where on the web i read it, perhaps Smirking Chimp (a great site even if the essay wasn't on there), but essentially the doctor predicted this latest bit of health issue news. The VP's body cannot continue to withstand the impact of long flights, long periods of sitting, and being away from dialysis and other therapeutic treatment regimens. He is a very ill and sick man, with congestive heart failure disease and related fluid retention issues. It is one of the reasons he is kept from the press for much of the time. It is why he makes these attack and run photo-op talking head babbling moments.

So what does this bode for Bushco? Well, the most likely scenario--that would potentially revive the White House, inspire Congress to back down, and whitewash Iraq and the related economic downturn--would be for Cheney to resign for health reasons. This will provide cover for what is really a veiled sacrificial offering of Cheney for all that has gone wrong with this administration's policies, made all the more evident from the Libby trial verdict. With Cheney quietly going off into his megamansions, Bush can appoint a new Veep who would become the major contender in the 2008 race. Now that CA has moved their primary up to February, the race has really officially started. Boosting Romney or McCain to Veep pushes that person into the most powerful position for shielding Bush from threat of impeachment as well as helping the GOP keep power in the White House. Will it happen???

this needs to create outrage!!!!

2007-02-28T09:19:00.000-08:00

The following passage is from a group that claims to be progressive, but it clearly is not so. The same text could just as easily have been written by the folks that bring us Straussian and Randian elitist neo-libertarian conservatism, as well as most of the so-called Lierberman-Clinton DLC centrists. Hell the AEI and Heritage could have written this screed.

For the United States to succeed in a new era of global competitiveness, the next generation needs to be equipped for the intellectual demands of the modern workplace. An alarming new state-by-state assessment of our nation's education system indicates that the United States is failing to prepare a 21st century workforce. The new report card, produced by the Chamber of Commerce with assistance from the Center for American Progress, finds that there is not a single state in the country where a majority of 4th and 8th graders are proficient in math and reading. The report's aim is to identify both "leaders and laggards in the tough business of school performance" and to highlight the many areas needed for education improvement. The report card's conclusion is unambiguous: states need to do a far better job of monitoring and delivering quality schooling. As Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings noted recently, “The consensus for strengthening our high schools has never been stronger.” Progressives and conservatives are united around common goals for our education system -- better teaching, more innovation, better data, and better management. The report is one step in building the political will needed to upend familiar arrangements and comfortable routines" and achieve much-needed reform.

The first two sentences reveal the vile and horrendous agenda (i would even go so far as suggesting "fascist") for furthering the attack on the planet resources, the failure of global capitalism to control its desired empire, and the lack of any substantive visions regarding how best humans can live on this fragile and dying planet. Curtis White, professor of English published his latest book: The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption, and the Culture of Total Work late last year, making the point that the notion of "workforce" and capitalized labor, funded by the endless globalizing consumption of the planet's mineral and species (including human) resources is a process that is both insane and self-destructive. It is our on-going behaviors that are killing the Earth. Arguing to continue along that plane of this event horizon will only result in more and greater disparity, increased and exponential collapse of the biosphere, and more and bitter wars. But hey, self-styled progressives think that the answer is more of the same. This is about empire and colonialism; it is about maintaining a failing economic system against all hope that it is worthy of being sustained.

Right up there with this, and obviously overlooked yet part of that "common goal" of centrists and conservatives (real true progressives have much healthier and appropriate visions thank you) is the following quote from the Israeli funded ubermensch neo-conservative John Podhoretz:

"What if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarf any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests? ... And as for the United States, what if we have every tool at our disposal to win a war--every weapons system we could want manned by the most superbly trained military in history--except the ability to match our exceed our antagonists in ruthlessness?"

One might add "the will" to demand that those not part of the educated elite (for without the feeder system complex as proposed by the faux-progressives and their conservative bedfellows, we wouldn't have a ruling elite) be coerced and forced into fighting the wars for them. Failed educational visions are so much more damaging to our planet than war. Programming children to enlist in expansion of their own institutionalization from early ages, for longer periods of time, to be "mined" for their intellectual energies, discarded as tailings of residues of toxic and hazardous beings--is a vision that ignores the Earth and all of its species.

For the record, i just spent the last two months visiting nearly all of the schools in my region, interviewing teachers, administrators, students, at all grade levels. The proposals by pseudo-progressive, DLC-supported, veiled fascists are exactly the opposite of what is needed in order for a positive, healthy, and harmonious future for all seven generations. Creating a workforce for global capitalism is no different than enslaving massive populations. Forcing small young children into institutionalization for six to eight hours a day just to sit rigidly being told what to absorb and how to act, all under the threat of the most coercive fear based motivators, is nothing short of post-modern whippings and beatings of the future slaves of the elitists.

Something i post from time to time... as a reminder

2007-02-24T11:39:00.000-08:00

I have been actively engaged in a series of trilogues discussing the singular importance of protecting the wisdom and knowledge of planetary survival that is embedded in indigenous tribal languages. We are losing these languages, this wealth of information required for sustainability, the tribes themselves, and most of our co-dependent species each and every day. If we do not actively and aggressive assert their huge importance, we will, as a species, lose our own capability to survive on a damaged and dying planet. One of the outgrowths of this effort is to remind those attending our panels that if we keep insisting that our children and grandchildren are our future energy resources (we live in an information age and the US is the fount of all informational wealth, and we must make our next generations successful and productive, yada yada) we will kill them. John Trudell, the outstanding and singularly important American Indian native poet, recited the following several years ago at the Watershed Poetry Festival in Berkeley, CA (used w/ permission). Please give him credit, but do pass it on.

WE ARE BEING MINED
By John Trudell

See I think --Of the things that are going on
See I think --We are being mined
See and I think--That the whole objective of life
Is to come through it with some type of understanding, about life
And to leave it—no more disturbed than it was,
As when we got here
And they’re your own ethics
And that takes care of the future --And that takes care of the past
And our relationship to power is connected in this kind of understanding
About what life is

But we live in a technologic perception of reality
And this technologic perception of reality is very real, because it’s here
But I think in this technologic perception of reality we have been turned into fuel
See sometimes I feel I live in a reality with nobody people nobody recognizes,
They don’t know who they are, they don’t know where they are, and they don’t understand
The language they’re speaking
They can say the words, they know many answers
But they understand very little of what they know
They have knowledge without understanding
It is like we are being mined
So we need to recognize who we are
We are human beings, that’s who we are
We are human beings
Human, bone, flesh, blood, metal, mineral, liquid
The DNA, the physical reality
The physical aspect of the human being
The physical aspect of our reality
The human form
The visible aspect
Is made up of the metals, minerals, liquids of the Earth
So we are shapes and forms and parts of the Earth
This is our shape our form--we have being

All the things of the Earth are made up of the same DNA
The same metal, mineral, liquid
And they have their shape and their form and they have their purpose
And they have being

And we live in a technologic perception of reality
Where we understand they can take the other shapes and forms of the Earth
And put them through mining processes
And as a result of them, we take the uranium from the Earth
Put it through a mining refinement process
And convert the being part of that DNA
Convert the being part of that Earth, into a form of energy
A mutation of power, but a form of energy that they tell us is power
But it is really a different thing

And we know they can do it with fossil fuel
They can take the DNA of the Earth and put it through the mining refinement process
and convert the being
The Being part of that physical DNA into a form of energy to run their electrical systems

So I think it would be in our best interests and the best interests of future generations
And the best interest of any type of understanding with Life
To consider the possibility that the human is being put through a mining refinement process
And that the being part is being converted into a form of energy
to run these authoritarian systems
We are being turned into fuel

Feel like something is missing from your life and as we understand
You take the uranium, the DNA of the Earth that is the shape of uranium
And put it through this mining refinement process
And covert it into a form of energy
We understand that leaves behind a toxic waste, a pollution
We understand this with all the fossil fuels

So we need to understand that as part of this process
of being part of the human being that’s mined
That the toxic waste that is left
These are the fears, and the doubts, and the insecurities that dominate
Most human beings’ lives, these days
And it keeps them from understanding what it means to be a human being
And the slight of mined is to convince us that it is all our fault

Hidden in the beauties of Babylon
The civilized behavioral notoriety
The more evil the empire
The more paranoid the society
Building to the new world order
We’re expected to carry the stone

Emperors and the feeding Class
Human beings being used up fast
The miners keep on mining
Intelligence is the mother-load
Imagination as an energy source
In this predators way of dining

Defining how and what we think
As we’re led to the way to believe
Conditioned reaction
We call thought
Our reality rides
In how we perceive

In the ways of being lost and alone
Who runs from their doubt and fear
In the mask of everything’s normal
Who’s not feeling or seeing too clear

Could be we’re being programmed
Anyway our spirit bleeds
All over our lives.
Our lives become fuel
For predator needs

Hidden in the beauties of Babylon
The civilized behavioral notoriety
The more evil the empire
The more paranoid the society

And about this mining process--Everything that ever happens to us, that has ever happened to us
What we have in common because of this DNA
We literally are children of the Earth--We are all descendents of tribes
Each and every one of us is a descendent of a tribe
At some point in the evolution of our DNA and within the evolution of our DNA
We all have a genetic memory, we carry the experience of our evolution
So we have this in common, we all come from tribes

And what happened to the tribes of this hemisphere happened to the tribes of Europe
and the descendents of the tribes of Europe over,
the two to three thousand years period of time before they got here
And by the time the tribes of Europe got here, they no longer knew they were human beings
Because they had been serfs and peasants, and they were owned by the landlords and the royalty
And all these wars for the possession of their souls, all this shit had taken place

So they no longer knew they were human beings, they didn’t understand
It was not a perceptional reality of theirs anymore, in any living practice
They did not know they were not human beings
They were subjects to something other

So all the things that ever happened to the tribes of Europe
and to the descendents of the tribes of Europe
and then their behavior when they got here
Had to do to affect and disconnect our perception of reality
It had to change our perceptional realities
And all of these things had to take place within our intelligence
Because, as human beings,
We were given protection, we were given medicine, we were given self-defense
And that’s our intelligence and we all have it
And this is what we are given

In order for this to be self-defense, and for it to be protection, and for it to be medicine
It must be clear and it must be coherent
But we have had programmed into us these fears, and these doubts, and these insecurities
As a part of the mining process, to keep us from being clear and coherent
Because a clear coherent human being, and a society of clear coherent human beings
Would not live the way that this society lives
No matter what it says
All of these things took place to our intelligence
That is the protection that we were given, is our intelligence
Our imagination, our creativity, our thoughts and our action upon these things
And this is where our access as human beings to power is
Is to clear, coherent use of our intelligence

This is our access to power
Everything else is an access to an illusion of power, authority systems
Do not confuse authority systems and electrical energy systems created by man as power
These are imitations of power
Power is another reality
And our true access to it is in our earthly connection and coherent use of our intelligence
This is our true access to power

And how powerful this is—
everyone just go into their own reality
Go inside their own reality, how much time
Do the fears, doubts, and darksides
How much time, do these things consume, in the individual realities
And how do they affect the others that you are close to, in the individual realities
This is power, it is—incoherently used
No offense, I mean that in a positive way

As a part of this reality check, we should always be honest with ourselves
No matter what it is
If we can’t be real to ourselves,
We can never synchronize the reality of our intentions
And all our good intentions and good motives
If we can’t be real to ourselves—are lost
It is the first step
We must be real to ourselves
Whether our reality is glorious or shameful
It doesn’t matter what it is, what it is
Is it must be recognized
We must be real to ourselves

two stories: common theme... we're screwed

2007-02-11T08:54:00.000-08:00

Newsweek on The Hidden War With Iran.

At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. “They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something we would be forced to retaliate for,” says Hillary Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs. …

A second Navy carrier group is steaming toward the Persian Gulf, and NEWSWEEK has learned that a third carrier will likely follow. Iran shot off a few missiles in those same tense waters last week, in a highly publicized test. With Americans and Iranians jousting on the chaotic battleground of Iraq, the chances of a small incident’s spiraling into a crisis are higher than they’ve been in years.

and this one:

Yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) announced his candidacy for president in Springfield, IL, where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” address. In his speech, Obama reiterated his call to redeploy U.S. forces out of Iraq by March 2008.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol attacked Obama’s Iraq policy, saying he wants to appease terrorists like pro-slavery politician Stephen Douglas tried to appease slave-owners. Kristol said, “Obama’s speech is a ‘can’t we get along’ speech — sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858.

Well, you figure it out yet?? Maybe this will help: it is the same thang that puts the neo-cons, AIPAC, the furthest-right Straussian/Randian objectivist libertarians, expansively large US energy corporations, and the military/security state industrial economy all in bed together. Still don't see it?

Given the near-exponentially expanding problems created by global climate change, the profusion of treatment resistant bacteria and viral agents, the dessimation and desertization of huge tracts of necessary arable and fertile land, and the collapse of the oceans, the reality that the planet can no longer sustain billions of human beings, requires those completely void of ethical responsibility (the Randian call of the selfish) and swathed in amorality to demand that the US military take any action necessary (including nuclear war) to secure control of the earth's energy and water resources. These people realize that only through direct confrontation will they themselves be able to hold onto power, to survive with most of their assets, property, and lifestyles intact, while millions upon millions suffer and die.

This 5% of the population is controlling every aspect of US governance at this moment. They know that a US economic collapse is potentially imminent if other than US dollars are demonstrated to be the currency of preference for the rest of the planet. To keep USD in the flow, and to artificially maintain the economy for themselves and their own selfish greed, these folks are willing to unleash the full dogs of war, not only against Iran and the rest of the middle-East, but also threaten and demand obediance from Russia and China. The oil of the middle east is the most efficient to refine, a light crude easy to pump, easy to transport, and easy to convert to products. The rest of the world's reserves are heavy and super heavy; they require nearly as much energy to refine as they produce at enormous expense. The other than US powers of the planet want middle-eastern crude now and are willing to pay for it not using USD, but Euros and Yuan. This is a huge problem.

Congress will do nothing, knowing as they do, that their own lives are part and parcel of the group that will enjoy the outcome of US control of planetary resources. This is, and will never be, about the citizens. This war, these ongoing efforts to expand and increase the war, is for control of the future in their views. When all is said and done, the US will be a nation of two groups. A few million extraordinarily wealthy people living in superb luxury, free to do anything as they please, and hundreds of millions living in environmental collapse, abject poverty, deep depressive pandemics of diseases and hazardous/toxic ravages. The rich and powerful are asking the rest of us to keep them that way at our own expense, as long as we don't know why.

Canis eus id comedit

2007-02-10T10:14:00.000-08:00

Consider the following:

Three giant pallets each loaded with cash amounting to more than $4 billion and weighing a total of 363 tons were sent to Baghdad aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, it has been revealed to Congress.

Of the more than $12 billion sent to Iraq, $8.8 billion remains unaccounted, without any paper trail that would lead to a successful audit. Is this a problem?? Apparently not for most of the GOP House members. Their litany of excuses ran from the mundane "war is war," to the more esoteric "it was Saddam's oil money so why would we care?" Perhaps the most heinous of the vile attitudes expressed was from a GOP idiot who suggested that $8.8 billion wasn't really all that much money.

What an asshole. But just for the record, what could $8.8 billion do for our economy at this point. Well, let's start with the original premise that the Iraq war was going to be paid for by Iraq. Thus the billions shipped in US dollars (non-exchangeable in Iraq by the way, by CPA regulations and laws) were allegedly supposed to have been turned over to the Secretary of the Treasury to reimburse the citizens of the US for expenses in Iraq. That clearly didn't happen.

The Iraq billions would cover the shortfall in the US education budget to pay for mandatory and compulsury programs such as NCLB. They could have paid for doubling the Pell and other higher education student loan programs, or covered all of the costs of Title I for one year. There are several states whose combined operating budgets could have been paid for by the billions. Perhaps the most useful of all possible choices would have been to invest the money into levee rebuilding after the Iraq invasion; an effort that would have prevented the damage of Katrina.

Oh well, it wasn't ours, right??

Si hoc signum legere potes, run away, run away

2007-02-03T10:16:00.000-08:00

How much more will the people take before the incompetency of the US government forces them to stand up and take it down???? I suspect that Jefferson's suggestion "all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed" is almost too representative of US citizens. The insanity of people who (for the most part are reasonably attentive and intelligent), continue to blithely accept the ever-increasing entropy of their own lives collapsing into depressive chaos, demonstrates the effectiveness of the mind virus that is capitalism.

This week i have read dispatches from people who are all too willing to complete ignore reality, substituting the talking points of Exxon for the actual text of the IPCC report on global climate change. Why they are doing so is beyond me, unless we ascribe the value of disassociative cognition to their thought processes. They know that our way of life is killing the planet, but see no other alternative they can accept other than using whatever means necessary (war) to maintain their levels of convenience and personal consumer habits. And i am not talking about people who are conservatives nor fundamentalists. No, i am describing relatively enlightened liberals, who feel completely justified in promoting classic liberal values through massive capitalization of their lives and "property" at the expense of the planet and most of its living populations. The "me first" fight or flight paradigm is obscuring the impending real collapse of the human life sustaining ecosystems, encouraging people to look at cheaper gasoline prices as a sign of good things rather than the intentional deception of the energy giants to hide their gargantuan 2006 record breaking profits.

If you can't see the forest for the trees, these folks seem to accept cutting down all the trees. Then they won't have to look for the forest at all, but rather stay in their greenhouse gas emitting sealed environments and watch the world go by on the telly. Well, the only good news in this regard is that the planet will make the choice, sooner rather than later, that the homo sapiens experiment wasn't all that successful. Better to dump one whole species than sacrifice the other 97%.

a week we wish hadn't been??

2007-01-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

The following pretty much sums up the output of the White House this week:

Have some highlights from last Wednesday’s Grover Norquist breakfast meeting:
* Tony Snow: “The Iranian people are more pro American than any American university faculty.”

Spinning more war rather than acknowledging that the US is in serious trouble, Bushco moves forward with plans to support an Israeli nuclear strike against Iran. Then, when the protests erupt, they will send troops into US cities, using "non-lethal" weapons to increase fear and vile coercion to oppress and repress dissent and opposition. Finally, they will cancel 2008 elections as the entire US economy goes into the toilet.

Yes i am making this up, sort of. Most serious political critics of Bushco acknowledge that what i suggest is all too entirely possible, and therein lies the tragedy and travesty of Snow's offhand stupid comment. Are we really to believe that the entire 68 million Iranians are loving the US more than the entire US demographic of faculty at this nation's 2500 four year universities and colleges??? Of course not. This is pure bullshit hyperbole, but for what purpose.

The Iranians certainly don't care. US university students and faculty know this is pure falsehood and lies. The vast majority of media reporting understands Snow is fabricating. Yet no one is holding him accountable for why he is doing so. The remark on its face is polarizing and partisan. It reeks of a hideous and vile anti-intellectualism, reducing academics to the status of un-american sub-humans, lesser than even the despicable hezbollah and hamas revolutionary classes of Iran. So why was Tony saying this??

Because he's an asshole!

faggot faggot faggot, nigger nigger nigger, kyke kyke kyke

2007-01-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

What the fuck happened to the First amendment? I remember when they took down the Fourth, and pretty much raked over the Fifth and Sixth along with the Ninth (can you say no-fly list). I even remember the last couple of campaigns where the clause in the First about peaceable assembly was denuded by the ambiguous and arbitrary reduction of that civil liberty to a small specific zone of a locality only. But I do not remember when they took away my right and liberty to use my speech freely.

Words do not have any power. Words are words, they are not weapons, nor clubs, nor bombs, nor flames, nor good, nor evil. Words are symbols and signs, semioticities awash with use and meanings that are ascribed to both the communicator and communicatee. The responsibility of our Constitution places the burden of protecting our rights and liberties upon those who would choose to deny them or diminsh them. Those that are offended by an utterance (Faggot, for example) do not have the right to stop people from using the word. They have the right to be offended if they so choose, and they have the right to speak out about their offense, but not about the word nor the use of the word. They only have the right to express their own displeasure during the experience of listening or reading the word. This is particularly true when one class of persons feels a certain word "belongs" to them, and can only be used by them, and that others who choose to use their word need to have their rights violated. This is also particularly true for people who rally around their own identity politics placards hosting all sorts of rights demeaning defamation claims against words being uttered by someone not of their particular identity.

Fuck being offended by words, you assholes. Be offended by the war, be offended by the poverty, be offended by the violence, be offended by the lack of basic necessities for healthy and safe survival. But stop behaving like the spoiled rich little children you are about the use of words. Reducing my right to free and unfettered speech, by coercing employers and corporations to punish people who use words that for some carry connotations that seem too much to bear (it is a fucking "word" dipshit), only further increases the depths to which our national police/security state has been made manifest. Give me my liberty back you bastards. How dare you claim words are powerful and dangerous? How dare you impose arbitrary and harsh punishments on people who use words to which you choose to take offense (loss of income, blacklisting, restraints on free trade)? Words are just textual signifiers for the holy shit's sake.

And speaking of Fuck, use it correctly for homo's sake

In the mean time watch this little video and think about how not to be like the FCC!

Ventis secundis, tene cursum as i hit the ___60?

2007-01-10T17:42:00.000-08:00

So, fifteen minutes before the idiot monkey spews on about this or that escalation of troops that will lead to thousands of more dying, and inevitably provide Israel to nuke Iran, and Iran to organize massive retaliation for which these new troops will be the defense of the precious oil... i am taking off to see the desert. It is cold here, and getting colder. Minus Celsius is not all that bad, but negative Farenheit temperatures totally suck. I'll be back when it warms up enough to snow or some such thing. And i will do my very best to have no idea whatsoever what that batshit public employee who lives in the big White House has to say.

Ciao fo now...

Noli me vocare, Magister Mundi sum!

2007-01-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

I was going to make a number of observations about the execution of Saddam and the apologetics and revisionist history of Ford, but better writers have made these points much more succinctly than i. Thus i will try to complete my thoughts on why our economy will be our ruin in the near future. Several post-holiday stories reveal that the overall retail sales were down, and did not even meet the lowered expectations proposed by financial analysts and corporate fiduciary spokespeople. This is not good news, but more than that, it hints at some serious miscalculations by the general population concerning their own well being.

First, we must realize, that no matter how much we all want to feel good about the way we live, our lifestyles are inordinately excessive in terms of planetary resources and the production of streams of human waste products. These wastes are beginning to extract a deadly toll on the planet. The lists are numerous and constantly in the news, and thus i don't need to go into that litany right now. What has been hidden, by our own choosing is the increasing costs of the infrastructure that our way of life requires. Our economy is structured in such a way that currency is exchanged for ever-increasing value (artificially induced) from which is extracted ostensibly miniscule percentages to provide direct development and maintenance of the infrastructure. In toto, we pay a remarkably large percent of our daily value to maintain our system itself, without regard for anything other than that system. This value is transfered directly to corporate accounts and further removed from the cycle as in any hierarchical rentier system.

Every aspect of our lives requires this extraction and capitulation of our own personal value to the system itself. We are paying and paying to just barely maintain that system, at the massive overwhelming personal benefit of a core group of human beings at the top of the hierarchy. When less than 1% of the citizens of the US are extracting and removing value from the other 300 million, each and every single day, we are living in an empire, a top down totalitarian state, mediated and hidden by our own paid for media. Look at everything in your immediate environment, calculate the cost and value of all that matter, how it got to you, how you acquired it, why you chose it, what it does, how it works, and realize that somewhere along the line an incredible stream of taxes, fees, excises, adjustments, etc are taken out and handed over to the corporations.

Our roads alone, upon which each and every one of these material products must travel demonstrate the hellish nightmare that is the economic ruin of our lives and the unsustainable destruction of the earth. How they are created, how they are maintained, how they are funded and paid for, how they are changed and altered--at each step of the process our own personal values are diminished and extracted. And if we simply no longer have any more value to give?? Well, fewer and fewer material resources will be available in the stream. The roads will degrade, the infrastructure that thrives from the use of those roads (food, energy, products, waste removal) will diminish, and the detritus of our failing economy will be expanding literally in our front yards. We cannot expect to continue to have our value extracted from us, mined from our beings in both physical and mental assets, and not become tailings and refuse ourselves. Look at the people of New Orleans. The hundreds of thousands of already poor who are now completely neglected at the expense of a few making whatever remaining efforts to extract the last vestiges of value from them (corporate contracts to provide: substandard housing, commodity foods that are toxic and unhealthy, and grossly mismanaged healthcare). As there becomes fewer and fewer chunks of value to extract from our cities and communities, the infrastructures will collapse.

This has all happened before, many times in human history. Often such precipitous collapses are linked to massive die-offs of people and their livestock. But now we have compounded the problem to such an extent that the causalities of collapse, the failing planetary economy and the inability to safely utilize the remaining available resources, are running smack into the most terrible of all proverbial walls: worldwide environmental collapse. The planet itself is reaching its threshold of sustaining complex lifeforms. Massive species extinctions are occurring at increasingly alarming rates. The list of new pathogens that can eradicate human beings has grown faster than research can fend them off. The death of the oceans is imminent, in terms of pollution, carbon changes, methane releases, and the melting of planetary ice. Dramatic weather and climate extremes will increase, placing even more demands on the artificial infrastructure to adapt, which it will not be capable of doing, given the failing economy.

And what i realize right now is that this isn't even the worst case scenario. NO, that involves that 1% of the population utilizing its remaining capacity to extract value to intentionally destroy wholesale infrastructures to keep for themselves the last resources. Can you say nuclear war???

I have only one small point to make

2006-12-27T18:01:00.000-08:00

about the death of Gerald Ford. Okay, maybe more than one, but these are simple straightforward wonderings.

For instance, he was not elected to the office of Vice President, nor that of President. He was appointed, as directed by the recently passed 25th Amendment. Thus Nixon, and his cabal of venal henchmen chose the successor knowing that he was a functioning puppet who could be controlled to the end of his days.

We are treating our dead Presidents as if they were kings, holding rituals and ceremonies for them, ignoring the Constitution's Article I, Section Nine which forbids these acts of nobility and aristocracy. What makes this one public servant so much more worthy than a Senator who has served this great nation for 24 years? Nothing except the pomp and ceremony given over to Kennedy when he was killed. Nixon jumped all over this, raising the imperial standard over the White House, claiming his emperorship and the mantle of all mighty power. Ford is a loser and glaringly unworthy of this puff and consequence.

Ford committed the unforgiveable pardon of Nixon, the hideous Kissinger approved destruction of East Timor, the invasion of Cambodia and Laos, and silly post- Vietnam proclamations. Ford was the puppet under which the first major robberies of the US Treasury were instituted by corporations led by the cabal. Ford was directed to allow the big oil companies to make billions in profit while preparing a second fake crisis. Ford is a loser and glaringly unworthy of any attention whatsoever.

essential economic problems

2006-12-24T11:24:00.000-08:00

The richest 2 percent of adults in the world own more than half the world's wealth, according to a new study released by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University. The study's authors say their work is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken. They found the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world's total. In contrast, the assets of half of the world's adult population account for barely 1 percent of global wealth.

<>"It reflects the extreme nature of inequality around the world," one of the study's authors, New York University Professor Edward Wolff, told OneWorld. "Yes, we are richer than Africa and Latin America and most of Asia, but how much richer is what hadn't really been established until our study came out," Wolff added. According to the report, the average American's wealth amounted to $144,000 in the year 2000, more than 100 times higher than the average Indian or Indonesian, whose assets totaled $1,100 and $1,400, respectively. The study defined wealth as physical and financial assets--like personal savings and home, land, and stock ownership--less debts. Besides the United States, only Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and Israel showed average personal wealth of more than $50,000.

These are powerful statistics, especially when viewed through the haze of how citizens in the US use the planet's natural resources to provide the infrastructure necessary to maintain such a dysfunctional unsustainable lifestyle. The nature of this economic disparity is rooted in the acceptance of three fundamental flaws in the basic philosophical principles that form the base for the US. Each of these alone would be sufficient to demonstrate the insanity of the attempts to keep it functioning, yet the irrational faith the public has in living these lies, further erodes the capacity of the earth to sustain life.

The most egregious of these flaws is that the economy is predicated on forcing US citizens to pay for basic life sustaining resources. All human beings require earth resources to effectively function in the environment of the planet. The capitalistic system demands that these resources be marketed rather than provided, although the planet itself provides. In essence, some humans beings, who have no direct connection to the process of extracting the resources and the humans using them to nurture their physiological needs, have inserted themselves into the flow, diverting not only resources, but also increasing the destructive processes of waste, toxicity, and unsustainability, as well as forcing an economic rentier taking from this. It is the ultimate in selfish greed. And yet no one complains, because everyone has faith that this is the only way to do it. No one questions the authority of why this must be so. No one challenges the flawed principles that are used to frame the constructs that allow immense human suffering to be increase in direct proportion to the apparent virtual increase in non-existent values. No one can eat money, or gold, or houses, or cars; no one can drink oil, or vinegars, or alkalais, etc. No, only food and water are useful, and in most of the populations of the planet, access to these essentials for life are free. But not here in the US, nope, we can't have that, because otherwise our unnecessary and earth destroying economic system would collapse.

The second flaw is one that libertarians find particularly attractive to promote. At the core of their demands for hierarchical wealth accumulation and private property, is the idea that a human being owns their personhood. While this is attractive, and justifies an incredible array of behaviors, all of which lead to the destruction of the planet at the expense of selfish affluence, the flaw is in the necessary separation of humans from all other species of life. The ownership principle must accept a distinct qualitative and quantitative difference between human dna and that of all other species, so that the hierarchical construct provides the argument that human consciousness is something authoritative and deserving. This of course must deny the functional necessary dependence of humans on other species to survive, including the species within their own physical bodies, without which humans could not survive. We cannot casually toss of the mantle of dependent interconnectedness in order to justify extracting virtual value from exploiting the earth and even other humans. Yet onward it goes, demanding more and more obedience and subservience of the masses of all species, including humans, to satisfy the greed and selfish behavior of those who have the audacity to suggest they are superior to others and deserve the plentitude of resources they take from everything else.

Takings are part of the third flaw, in that profit is nothing other than taking something for nothing. It is a form of theft, stealing value from others, from the earth, using portions of that profit to purchase the labor of some for security to increase the takings. The staunchest advocates for private property (owning parts of the earth) must take from others to sustain their way of life. No matter how they disguise it, they are nothing other than theives of the wellbeing, despoilers of the common good, and damagers of the planet. Profit is theft of labor and utility, theft of resources, generated on the toxification of environments, and so far forth. Profit is a legal construct that protects this form of robbery within the system, in order to maintain the system, designed solely to protect itself even up to the point of destroying the earth rather than acknowledge its own flaws and failures. We citizens in the US must begin to reject the authority of a system that allows some to steal so much from us and from the earth. We must reject, condemn, deny, and throw out the infrastructural constructs that allow some to claim they are better than others in order to use more of the planet for their own desires, and therefore increase planet wide suffering.

a lazy day blog away...

2006-12-21T13:10:00.000-08:00

The instructions i received to facilitate the playing of this game:

Grab the book closest to you.
Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence.
Post the text of next 3 sentences on your blog.
Name of the book and the author.
Tag three people.

I: Well damn, i sit next to a bookshelf with a few hundred books, and by closest to me, i can only infer they are referencing a measure of differing distances which are not at all easily discernible given the size and shape of the bookcase. I wonder if i should get up and get a tape measure and start with that problem. mmmmm okay, that narrows it down to three four choices all within a millimeter of difference in distance. We have Journeys in Microspace; The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, an Intimate History of Humanity, and Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. I therefore arbitrarly select the last volume for the thrill of the game.

II: the page heading is James Joyce and features a variety of entrees from "In Flanders Fields" to Joyce, James.

III:
Irving, Washington An American author of the nineteenth century; "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" are two of his best known works.
it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done A sentence from the end of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
The Character who says this is about to die in place of another man.

IV: Hirsch, E.D., Kett, Joseph, Trefil, James: The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.

V: I never tag other people

This is not good... and won't be for a long time

2006-12-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

So here are some stories that have a great deal to do with one another, and almost nothing to do with any good or beneficial direction in the state of the planet. Consider three distinct areas of operations in which the money is flowing: military expenditures, energy resource costs, transportation of necessities. All of these are huge burdens on the mass of the population of the Earth, yet there are those that extract the financial rent from the system, who are under no illusions about their desparate need to keep the status quo in order to insulate themselves from the coming global depression.

With labor under attack the "share of American workers carrying union cards has plunged from over 20 percent in 1980 to under 13 percent in 2005, and almost half of those are government employees." In a report on the recent boom in corporate profits, economists at Goldman Sachs wrote plainly, “The most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income." Cornell University researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner writes, at least 5 percent of workers involved in unionization campaigns are fired, which is both quite illegal and quite routine: Companies would rather pay the nominal fines than pay their workers higher wages and lose the absolute control they hold over the work lives of their employees." Today's labor movement faces union-busting law firms and consulting agencies which are increasingly enlisted by union-wary employers to keep labor from organizing. Today, the vast majority of union members -- 84 percent -- live in only 12 states, leaving workers with little organized power in much of the country.

Dare we say that most citizens of the US, 95% of them, are not experiencing the best possible potential future, given the current state of their lives, their access to healthcare, their costs for energy, and their costs for food??

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs will set a record this year when it comes to paying bonuses. It is giving out $16.5 billion. Some top executives are expected to get a whopping $100 million dollars. They are the highest paid people in one of the world's richest cities, and they're about to make even more. After a year of record profits on Wall Street, investment banks are dividing up the winnings. Goldman Sachs is reportedly leading the way:
Average worker at Goldman will take home $622,000 this year
Senior administrators will get $5 to 10 million dollars
Senior executives and traders get $10 to 20 million each
Company CEO and department heads get $25 million
Top traders will get $50 million and more
"The reason they're making so much money for themselves is because they're making so much money for their firms ... You can debate all day whether it's fair or unfair but they're being compensated as a portion of what they're making," Neil Weinberg, of Forbes Magazine, said. The bonuses help fuel the city's economy through income taxes and sales taxes. Everyone from luxury car dealers to jewelers will feel it. But economists say Wall Street's richest drive up the cost of living in New York and widen the gap between the rich and everyone else.

But that is not all, by any stretch of the imagination

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., led by its strength in bond trading, reported a 22 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit and ended the year with a record $4 billion in earnings. Lehman, the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm by market value, increased earnings at a slower pace than competitors Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. Growth was led by a 31 percent gain in revenue from fixed-income sales and trading. Fees from investment banking rose 5 percent, reversing a third- quarter decline

So we live in a country that is now so glaringly dysfunctional that those that are reaping the direct benefits from it all are demanding and requiring the rest of us to keep ponying up so that they won't begin to slide down. They need us to believe that because as long as we do, they "promise" to protect us from the depression that will happen anyway.

Why this isn't a problem, but a solution--Totum dependeat

2006-12-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

Dark economic clouds are gathering ahead. After six years of booming home prices, the great American housing bubble has finally popped, and the market is now on the verge of collapse. Tens of millions of families who bought homes at bubble-inflated prices "now face the prospect of seeing their life savings disappear." This development will have wide-ranging effects on the American economy. "Over the last few years," writes Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, "most good U.S. economic news has been the result of soaring home prices." With this engine of economic growth now broken down, America faces a potential future of rapidly falling house prices, rising default and bankruptcy rates," lost jobs, fewer consumption, even a possible recession." The dark clouds ahead may be a perfect storm hitting the U.S. economy.

So, what is good about this?? Well it is really quite simple, though a bit abstract. Our entire national economic engine functions solely because people buy stuff. And by "stuff" i refer to the extraneous, unnecessary consumer items upon which a vast assortment of taxes, fees, tariffs, etc. are generated for local, state, and federal governments. Sales taxes and excise taxes, road user fees, transportation levies--all manner of funding of our infrastructure and services to just simply survive is predicated on convincing the majority of the population to keep purchasing things they do not need, that damage the planet, that corrupt governments, and create massive suffering. Without a home mortgage deduction on income taxes, without the capacity to pass on property taxes exemptions and deductions on other taxes, consumer would not be sufficiently financed to help the capitalists keep the economic system operating. And therein lies the direct benefit of the next global depression.

We have chance, a real and serious opportunity, to end the cycle of carnage and damage to our planet, to increase sustainability and social justice, to empower and use redistributive justice to enact participational parity, to reduce and constrain greenhouse gas emissions and so forth, simply by rooting for the depression. People will stop having money to spend on useless junk, and focus solely on providing for their families. They will be forced to travel less, reduce their use of fossil fuels, seek solutions to growing and producing local foods, design more cooperative and collaborative localized relations to function in the place of bankrupt governments. Our dependency on foreign oil, on products from outside the US, on maintaining this militarized empire to supply itself will be cast aside as more and more people find it absolutely necessary to reprioritize the very core of their survival, basing decisions on their real needs, and not on their whims and wants. TV's will turn off, when cable bills are unpaid in exchange for buying food. Cars will stop being driven so that people can access healthcare and cheaper mass transit.

These will have egalitarian benefits, as the rich and powerful realize that without a functioning economic engine, their peasant-serf workforces, who are supposed to protect them and their precious property, will have other, much more visceral and meaningful priorities. Gone will be the capability and capacity of the systems to evict folks from their foreclosed homes. Local governments will find it better to simply ignore orders from national and international financial operations, and focus their diminishing resources on providing as best they can for the people for whom they have allegiance (and a serous survival stake). We can foresee the end of recreational vehicle toys and use, we can envision the end of large scale movement of crappy GE and GMO foods around the planet and country, we can finally take a breath from the onslaught of capitalists demanding we keep them happy.

Depression or planetary salvation? You make the call.

November wrap up and then sum..

2006-12-01T08:07:00.000-08:00

A case that best represents the imperial centristic conceit of the US would be the take on hurricanes this year. We have arrived at the official end of the season and our own press suggests the following:

Hurricane Season A Breeze... This Time The Ledger - Nov 30, 2006
Hurricane season bows out quietly CNN International
The calm instead of the storm NATURE.com

The irony of this cannot be lost however, since in the same round up of the season we find the following stories:

Official: Typhoon casualties in Philippines could attain 200 MANILA, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Over 200 people are feared dead as typhoon Durian battered Albay province, central Philippines, with heavy downpour that caused mudslides from Mount Mayon volcano, a top government official said Friday.
Death toll rises to nearly 200 in Philippine typhoon, 260 missing Canada.com
Death Toll In Philippine Typhoon Rises To 147 Playfuls.com

Opps, did someone forget to tell the billions of people living in Asia that their experience of eight super-typhoons (and twelve other ones), killing thousands, destroying billions of dollars of property and infrastructure was just a quiet calm breeze of a season???? But that also fails to mention our nearest neighbor as well, Mexico. I guess they don't count either, what with the four Cat 3+ storms that wasted the Pacific Coast and thrashed Cabo San Lucas three of those times. No, of course the only substantive measure of a bad hurricane season is the Gulf Coast. Hell these idiots didn't even bother to reference the massive rains and flooding that the Mexican hurricanes created in the Southwest. The mindnumbing provincialism of this should help people realize that the rest of the world sees us for what we truly are: selfish arrogant conceited mindless bigots.

I have a problem with the supposed hit TV show: HOUSE. This season they introduced the most unrealistic and bizarre character portrayl ever, of an overzealous, self-righteous police detective. The role has this minder of virtue acting like one of Stalin's or Beria's private thugs, pursuing House with vicious unconstitutional illegal due process behaviors; behaviors that even an inept and incompetent attorney would have stopped a while ago. To continue down this idiotic and stupid script plot only destroys all that is best about the show. This guy must die, and soon too. No police detective would ever be free to act as this guy; that is why we have district attorneys, special investigators, layers of evidenciary and rights protections, and courts with skilled and knowledgeable judges. If the idea is to suggest to the American people that this is how we want our government to behave, then we are indeed headed for a fascist hell that is beyond measure. Kill the guy off and save America.

thanks for what???

2006-11-23T09:42:00.000-08:00

In a Paul Craig Roberts essay published today, i find myself and my thoughts being echoed. There will not be anything to be thankful for until we are done with Bushco. And we cannot be done with Bushco until they are all, every single one of them (legislators, political appointees, hired staffers, justices, all of them) out of government service and their leadership in prisons around the world. If, as a nation, we are unable to do this, accepting the trite and petty bullshit that bygones shall be bygones, and that can go into the past, well then we won't be done with them. They will still be in power, manipulating and controlling the future of the country and the planet. PCR writes:

George Orwell warned us, but what American would have expected that in the opening years of the 21st century the United States would become a country in which lies and deception by the President and Vice President were the basis for a foreign policy of war and aggression, and in which indefinite detention without charges, torture, and spying on citizens without warrants have displaced the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution?

If anyone had predicted that the election of George W. Bush to the presidency would result in an American police state and illegal wars of aggression, he would have been dismissed as a lunatic.

What American ever would have thought that any US president and attorney general would defend torture or that a Republican Congress would pass a bill legalizing torture by the executive branch and exempting the executive branch from the Geneva Conventions?

What American ever would have expected the US Congress to accept the president's claim that he is above the law?

What American could have imagined that if such crimes and travesties occurred, nothing would be done about them and that the media and opposition party would be largely silent?

Except for a few columnists, who are denounced by "conservatives" as traitors for defending the Bill of Rights, the defense of US civil liberty has been limited to the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. The few federal judges who have refused to genuflect before the Bush police state are denounced by attorney general Alberto Gonzales as a "grave threat" to US security. Vice president Richard Cheney called a federal judge's ruling against the Bush regime's illegal and unconstitutional warrantless surveillance program "an indefensible act of judicial overreaching."

But, alas, "law and order conservatives" have been brainwashed for decades that civil liberties are unnecessary interferences with the ability of police to protect us from criminals. Americans have forgot that we need protection from government more than we need protection from criminals. Once we cut down civil liberty so that police may better pursue criminals and terrorists, where do we stand when government turns on us?

Americans should be roused to fury that attorney general Alberto Gonzales and vice president Cheney have condemned the defense of American civil liberty as "a grave threat to US security." This blatant use of an orchestrated and propagandistic fear to create a "national security" wedge against the Bill of Rights is an impeachable offense.

Mark my words, the future of civil liberty in the US depends on the impeachment and conviction of Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales.

We must stand together and renounce this national nightmare. We must undo the more than one thousand edicts and orders that are destroying the environment of the planet and space. We must retake our own institutions, especially schools and other public commons, freeing ourselves of the fascism that has become endemic to the core beliefs of most citizens. Too many of you are accepting too much, stop it!

what threats?? ooohhh i get it.

2006-11-18T09:19:00.000-08:00

The top U.S. general in the Middle East, Army Gen. John Abizaid, said on Friday that if the world fails to stop the escalation of military crisis in Middle East, it will face a third world war. Among the major problems tearing up the Middle East region Abizaid named Arab-Israeli tensions, militant extremism, and Iran's nuclear program. However, dealing with Iraq is number one priority, according to Abizaid, who thinks that al Qaeda ideology is dangerously similar to fascist ideology in 1930s that led to World War II.

"If we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we'll go through World War Three tomorrow," Abizaid said speaking at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge. "The sacrifice that is necessary to stabilize Iraq, in my view, must be sustained in order for the region itself to become more resilient." Abizaid earlier in the week warned U.S. Congress against setting up a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Abizaid's comments came only a week after President George W. Bush's Republicans lost the congressional elections largely because of growing angst in the American society over the 4-year-long Iraq war.

Shall we read between the lines then?? Okay. What we got here is the military version of three card monte. First the shark shows you the threat, in this case al Qaeda terrorism. Then he hides Iraq under the threat as Iraq is a breeding ground for al Qaeda. Then Iraq gets covers the Middle East in general, and finally all of that covers the planet and there we have it. What?? You don't get it?? Then you weren't following the threat, but rather the facts, and we all know that facts ruin a perfectly good attempt at propaganda.

You see, the US invaded Iraq to control the water and oil resources (Israel needs the water, and the US needs the oil to be sold in US dollars). Then the US claims that Iraq is liberated, but secretly supports the insurgency through fundings contracts without controls. The insurgency then becomes a breeding ground for terrorists, and that allows the US to claim that we must continue this war in perpetuity. Iraq is Iran (since Iran is a threat to Israel and to the US dollar) and therefore we need to attack Iraq/Iran to stop it/them from becoming powerful. Because if we allow them (you know, we have all this power to let them do whatever we want see) to get stronger and have more weapons and non-US dollars, they will fund more terrorists. And then we need to expand the war on many horizons, since other countries (like Venzuela, Nigeria, Myanmar, and Sudan) won't sell us our oil cheap. That way the world is at war. But it will always be there fault, for not just bending over and being screwed like the citizens of the US have been doing so wonderfully up until a couple of weeks ago. Which means that a world war is necessary to get the US population to lay back down on their stomachs and let the military/security/police corporate fascist state screw them where they lie.

Because, we have so much power, we get to change the name of things, and therefore those that oppose our institution of a US global fascist imperial regime must be the real fascists (this of course assumes that the word no longer means anything other than a dysphemic label). The only real fascists must call those that oppose them fascists in order to foment the spread of war further and farther than before.

the election sheen is scratched and dirty

2006-11-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

Now that the politicians have settled back into their regular activities, the stain of fascism is still showing through in this country. The behavior of the White House and the GOP particularly do not bode well for the planet and the future. I was thinking about how a core cabal of national leaders, agreeing to set in motion fixed plans to facilitate the creation of a US militarized security state, that uses nuclear weapons to dominate the rest of the world and its resources, is not something outside of possibility. It is likely, given the election results, the resistance of the media to accept and project a view that people might not think as they do, and the ongoing behavior of the leaders, we are well on the way to not having a 2008 election at all. And unfortunately, as the ravages of global climate change and its accompanying diseases and other natural catastrophic problems fall upon the citizens, most of them will happily allow their government to keep them living in the best possible status quo. Talking with seemingly reasonable people locally reveals that they are in fact quite accepting of doing whatever it takes to control the planet's resources just for the citizens of the US. That ain't cool, and can only represent the ongoing thinking among the rich and powerful that they have an open season on the Constitution, the nations of the world, the expansion of a US gulag, and the repression of dissent.

I can't see how people here will avoid the same human thought processes that have led whole nations to blindly follow Alexander, Moghul Shah, Genghis Kahn, Saladin, Julius and Augustus Caesar's, Holy Roman Emperors, Napolean, Victoria, Kaiser Bismark, Mussolini, Hitler, et all throughout human history. Why shouldn't we imagine that Cheney and his fellow clan of elitist Straussian/Randian objectivist libertarians see the entire planet at their beck and call. There are numerous philosophical rationales for such behavior. And from what i can see, there isn't much in the way to stop them at this point.

wtf happened???

2006-11-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

There was this election the other day, and a few things changed. But why do i keep thinking that things didn't really change at all??? Well it could be the fight over who is Chairperson of the House Intelligence Committee. Harmon, one of the more corrupt and centrist DLC Dems wants the job, so she can continue to cover up the malfeasance of her corporate contributors. And Doc Hastings wants the job, so he can help his previously corrupt contributors continue to bribe him some more. If these are the two choices, we haven't moved at all towards a better country. Promise goes up in flames of stupid again.

I think we all need a Dylan refresher course

2006-11-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

They're selling postcards of the hanging -/- Saddam
They're painting the passports brown -/- Detain citizens as enemy combatants
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors -/-
Fashion is more important than global climate change
The circus is in town -/- General Election of 2006
Here comes the blind commissioner -/-
Can you say inspector generals relieved of duties
They've got him in a trance -/-
Listen to Kerry's joke, pay no attention to the GOP House members
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker -/- Congressmen Sweeney and Hastert
The other is in his pants -/- Foley and Haggard
And the riot squad they're restless -/-
Call out the private security forces to protect the hacking of machines
They need somewhere to go -/- Out of Iraq and Afghanistan?
As Lady and I look out tonight -/- Liberty and Justice
From Desolation Row -/- the USA

Cinderella, she seems so easy -/- Angelina Jolie
"It takes one to know one," she smiles -/- Nicole Kidman
And puts her hands in her back pockets -/- Jennifer Aniston
Bette Davis style -/- Renee Zellwegger
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning -/- Brad Pitt
"You Belong to Me I Believe" -/- Tom Cruise
And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend
You had better leave" -/- George Clooney
And the only sound that's left -/- Hear those cameras click
After the ambulances go -/- Keith Urban
Is Cinderella sweeping up -/- Angelina in the third world
On Desolation Row -/- the USA

Now the moon is almost hidden -/- Hope for a better planet
The stars are beginning to hide -/- Global climate change killing species
The fortunetelling lady -/- Gaia's corporate-government enemies
Has even taken all her things inside -/- Document shredding begins in DC
All except for Cain and Abel -/- Dick in Bush
And the hunchback of Notre Dame -/- Roman Catholic pedophelia
Everybody is making love -/-
Conservative Christian anti-homosexual but still gay leadership
Or else expecting rain -/- ACLU
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing -/-
Entertainment infotainment celebrity attention span diversions
He's getting ready for the show -/- Follow the bouncing celebrity tits and ass
He's going to the carnival tonight -/- Main Streaming media
On Desolation Row -/- the USA

Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window -/- Marisa Hargitay
For her I feel so afraid -/- Nicole Ritchie
On her twenty-second birthday -/- Lindsey Lohan
She already is an old maid -/- Paris Hilton
To her, death is quite romantic -/- Winona Ryder
She wears an iron vest -/- Gweneth Paltrow
Her profession's her religion -/- Madonna
Her sin is her lifelessness -/- Micha Barton
And though her eyes are fixed upon -/- Scarlet Johansson
Noah's great rainbow -/- the Kate/Cate/Kathryn/Kirsten
She spends her time peeking -/- Reese Witherspoon
Into Desolation Row -/- the USA

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood -/- Affleck and Damon
With his memories in a trunk -/- Another set of films
Passed this way an hour ago -/- Trying to open a dialog
With his friend, a jealous monk -/- Ferrell or Willis or Kutcher
He looked so immaculately frightful -/- Schwarzenegger
As he bummed a cigarette -/- Martin Sheen
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes -/- Sean Penn
And reciting the alphabet -/- Denzell and Samuel L
Now you would not think to look at him -/- Fishburne or Whittaker
But he was famous long ago -/- Hoffman and Newman
For playing the electric violin -/- Stephan G et Jean Luc P
On Desolation Row -/- the USA

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world -/- Cheney
Inside of a leather cup -/- Hadley and Addington
But all his sexless patients -/- Hastert and Frist
They're trying to blow it up -/- Foley is Haggard
Now his nurse, some local loser -/- Rove
She's in charge of the cyanide hole -/- Card
And she also keeps the cards that read -/- Dobson & Falwell
"Have Mercy on His Soul" -/- W or DeLay?
They all play on penny whistles -/- Boehner and the boys
You can hear them blow -/- Rumsfeld
If you lean your head out far enough -/- Capitol nor Pentagon
From Desolation Row -/- the USA

Across the street they've nailed the curtains -/- NASA, EPA, FDA
They're getting ready for the feast -/- corporate dinner donor lists
The Phantom of the Opera -/- DeLay of the K Street
A perfect image of a priest -/- Norquist
They're spoonfeeding Casanova -/- the citizens of the USA
To get him to feel more assured -/- celebrity news and the new TV season
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence -/- ignore all science for political pursuits
After poisoning him with words -/- what won't kill you won't hurt you too much
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls -/- food industry's GMO and other increased fats
"Get Outa Here If You Don't Know -/- choking on global climate change
Casanova is just being punished for going -/- you people are all on your own
To Desolation Row" -/- the USA

Now at midnight all the agents -/-
DHS, FBI, DOJ, NSA, CIA, DOD, NCIS, ACID
And the superhuman crew -/-
all local militarized law enforcement
Come out and round up everyone -/-
the Constitution is in shreds
That knows more than they do -/-
pretty much most of the Earth's human population
Then they bring them to the factory -/-
the heart of the matrix of TV, iPod, Internets, media mind control central
Where the heart-attack machine -/-
overeating, over indulgence, over stimulation, over stress
Is strapped across their shoulders -/-
wage slavery fails to keep up with standard of survivable living
And then the kerosene -/-
disparity of the rich becoming ever richer and healthier
Is brought down from the castles -/-
increasing world poverty, more diseases, more catastrophes
By insurance men who go -/-
globalization of remaining capital assets
Check to see that nobody is escaping -/-
militarizing all foreign policy, a nuclear weapon is necessary
To Desolation Row -/- the USA

Praise be to Nero's Neptune -/- Rumsfeld
The Titanic sails at dawn -/- FoxNews
And everybody's shouting -/- Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh
"Which Side Are You On?" you are all terrorists
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot -/- Berube and Brayton
Fighting in the captain's tower -/- blogsphere expanding trope
While calypso singers laugh at them -/- 50¢, Eminem, JayZ, Snoopp
And fishermen hold flowers -/- commentors and posts on threads
Between the windows of the sea -/-
NYRB or Newsweek; Moyers or Blitzer; Olberman or Gibson
Where lovely mermaids flow -/- Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue
And nobody has to think too much -/- hours of celebrity infotainment
About Desolation Row -/- the USA

Yes, I received your letter yesterday -/- the ballot came in my mail
(About the time the door knob broke) -/- it could easily not be counted
When you asked how I was doing -/- i vote the bottom up anyway
Was that some kind of joke? -/- submit it to be counted
All these people that you mention -/-
the candidates, their supporters, and the corporations who run the machine
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame -/-
they are mostly scum who are zealously selfish about their own interests
I had to rearrange their faces -/-
evolution provided wonderful alkaloids for this purpose
And give them all another name -/-
changing the labels on the same old bottles of wine
Right now I can't read too good -/-
damn those alkaloids, all i see are geometric pattern fluctuations
Don't send me no more letters no -/- the voting processes are void of verifiability
Not unless you mail them -/- with NCR paper trail record keeping
From Desolation Row -/- the USA

either they are insane

2006-11-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

or they really believe that lying to you is necessary? Of course that syllogistic interrogative may not be and either/or proposition, rather just a cause/effect one. All i can discern is that the leadership of the GOP is spewing some of the most disingenuous and vile propaganda ever. The lies and deceits are becoming legendary going into the final days of the campaign. Here are just a few, culled from the headlines.

A male prostitute alleges that he had a three-year relationship with prominent right-wing evangelical leader Ted Haggard, who has said that homosexuality is a sin; every Monday, Haggard participates in a conference call with members of the Bush administration. He has stated, “I’m a right-wing religious conservative..."

Representative and GOP House Majority Leader Boehner says:
"Let's not blame what's happening in Iraq on Rumsfeld… the generals on the ground are in charge."
"to beat John Kerry to death if he doesn’t apologize for his comments on Iraq"
"There are a lot of people who want to blame what’s happening in Iraq on Donald Rumsfeld. But when you look at the transformation that our military has been through, it’s nothing short of remarkable. And I think there’s only person in America who could have brought about that transformation and that’s Donald Rumsfeld"

Bush says:
“I really don’t think it’s fitting for the president to drag the presidency into that kind of a mudslinging.”(is this not a classic Nixon redux?)
"However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses"
"I’ve never really resorted to name-calling. And I’m not trying to say, well, you know, I’m innocent and everybody else is guilty. That’s not what I’m trying to say."

“President Bush said Wednesday he wants Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to remain in his administration until the end of his presidency, extending a job guarantee to two of the most-criticized members of his team.”

Inspectors general from NASA and the Commerce Department will investigate if Bush’s “political appointees have prevented climate researchers at from conveying their findings to the public.

it's an economic headline mash mucking

2006-10-28T09:22:00.001-07:00

Today we reflect on this week in the economy, as revealed in the business and political headlines:

Bush: Tax Cuts Good For Economy

Growth slowest in more than 3 years

Housing slump hits US economy growth

Q3 profit climbs to $10.49 billion

Chevron Continues Big Oil's Hot Streak

Chevron earns record profits

GDP Slows Sharply to1.6% Rate

Wall St. closes lower as growth falters

US economy falters as service sector dips

US economy losing its global dominance

Slump May Chill Asia's Hot Exporters

Global trade no longer hostage to US consumers

The rich get richer in Bush economy

Poor people die earlier: but why?

Reducing poverty will cut health bills, says research

Stakes are High for Business in Nov. Elections

Masticate Feces and Be Deceased you shriveling lunatic!

2006-10-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

This from the most nefarious of idiots managing the US government at this time:

At the Pentagon press conference this afternoon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked what would happen if the Iraqi government failed to meet the “benchmarks.” Rumsfeld first responded that “it is not complicated,” but just seconds later said, “This is complicated stuff. It’s difficult. We’re looking out into the future. No one can predict the future with absolute certainty.” He added, “So you ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it’s complicated, it’s difficult.”

All that i can think to say is: shut the fuck up you spineless lizard of a chickenhawk! If no one can predict the future, then why in your own godheaded assbackward mind, did you promote and manipulate the US into invading Iraq in the first place??? The senility is no longer being hidden, the man is stark raving insane. He must be fired immediately, if not, then impeach the bastard.

a short pause in today's moments.

2006-10-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

If the Repugs are able to withstand the onslaught and keep control of the House and Senate, it will be one of the crowning achievements of Karl Rove's life. It will also provide substantive evidence for something that the US military, the CIA, the NSA, and every other federal intelligence and security apparatus agency, has known for a long long time: there is a profound use of, and need for, political assasinations.

reading between the lines time again

2006-10-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

Official disclaimer: My sister, upon receiving her Ph.D. was hired as a research nutritionist for the largest processor of tuna products in the US. This was during the mid to late-1970's, at the beginning of the focus on the Japanese experiencing large scale mercury poisoning from their seafood. Her analysis led her to warn members of her family to stay away from most seafood along the upper end of the protein food chain. She found unsafe levels of mercury, PCB's, and other contaminants in all fish brought through her lab; though the USDA, FDA, and NHS had agreed that the levels (the news ones they proposed) had not been exceeded, the levels my sister found were too high for her to accept. Now a new report from a taskforce on health and sea food suggests that we need to balance the healthy benefits with the known risks. How does this work??? Welll the following paragraph in the report certainly ought to illuminate that:

• For all seafood categories, levels of contaminants such as dioxin and PCBs in commercially obtained fish generally do not pose health risks when consumed in amounts recommended by federal agencies. These contaminants tend to be geographically specific problems. State advisories are intended to alert the public about contaminated fish and shellfish from regional and local sources. Most people can gain nutritional benefits from seafood while minimising their risk of exposure to contaminants by selecting fish and shellfish in amounts that fall within current dietary guidelines, the report says. Because seafood supplies and cultivation practices change constantly, it would be difficult for federal agencies to develop a list of "good fish" and "bad fish" that would not become obsolete in a short time.

Read that paragraph carefully again. Did you see that lovely and amazing equivocation? "Fish generally do not pose health risks" speaks volumes here. Generally is a gianormous category isn't it? Another valid way to say this would be that only in specific cases would the consumption of fish pose health risks; and that those cases include eating fish in amounts outside of those recommended by a consortium of federal agencies. However those federal agencies cannot agree on those recommendations, each suggesting different levels of exposure and quantities for safe and health eating. Then of course there is the reliance of consumers on state advisories; somehow commercial media, paid for by the largest food corporations in the US are going to provide education to the population regarding the safety and health of seafood??? I can't see that happening, any more than i can see people only eating recommended amounts. The US over eats constantly, in massive quantities. And if that isn't sufficient, then they note that bothering to actually work on these guidelines is pointless because they would have to change them constantly. So the people should rely on information that is current, but that current information isn't reliable, and no new information will be used in the recommendations, but people should pay attention to advisories. This is an objectivist libertarian's wetdream.

The rest of the report isn't really any better. Perhaps one of the most striking aspects may be that it does admit that all of our seafood is toxic at some levels. That human beings have successful polluted the oceans and rivers, lakes and seas, with massive amounts of hazardous materials should be the banner headline of this report. But they bury that information pretty deep down in there.

Seafood is the major source of human exposure to methylmercury, a contaminant that accumulates in the muscle of animals over time. Because evidence suggests that methylmercury can disrupt neurodevelopment in the foetus, the report supports current recommendations that women who are pregnant or wish to become pregnant avoid consumption of lean, predatory fish such as swordfish, shark, king mackerel, and tilefish, and limit their consumption of albacore, or "white" tuna. Other potential risks associated with seafood are exposure to persistent organic pollutants such as dioxin and PCBs - though there is not clear evidence on the adverse effects associated with these compounds - and microbial infections, which are contracted mainly through the consumption of raw or undercooked fish and shellfish.

The report supports current dietary guidelines and seafood advisories. However, the committee's interpretation of the risks and benefits differs in that it consolidates information on both risks and benefits for sensitive population groups and addresses all segments of the population. And it does not support giving those with a history of heart disease advice different from that given to the general population

Among their other recommendations are these gems:

• Lean fish are good sources of protein, are low in saturated fat and cholesterol, and provide moderate amounts of omega-3 fatty acids. Predatory fish with long life spans - such as swordfish, shark, and tilefish - contain levels of methylmercury that are too high for pregnant and breast-feeding women.

• Fatty fish such as salmon are good sources of protein and provide the highest amounts of omega-3 fatty acids. They also contain higher levels of saturated fat and cholesterol and can accumulate higher amounts of pollutants such as dioxin and PCB, depending upon the source. Their methylmercury burden is lower than that of many lean fish.

• Shellfish and crustaceans are good sources of protein and low in saturated fat, although some contain moderate amounts of cholesterol. They present the greatest risk of microbial infection if eaten raw.

Can you make sense of this? Eat salmon for the protein and omega-3 fatty acids; don't eat salmon because it contains some of the highest levels of toxic chemicals humans have spewed on the planet. Don't eat long-lived lean fishes (most of those sold throughout the US) because they contain the most mercury; eat long-lived lean fishes because they have good proteins and best balance of fatty acids w/ zero cholesterol. And so forth.

The problem is solved quite simply. Eat more vegetables, fruits, legumes, grains, and much less seafood, and very little meat.

I demand CNN & FOX apologize immediately,

2006-10-13T08:07:00.000-07:00

as well as all those conservative talking heads who lambasted Eason Jordan. I notice that i can't, at this time, find that either CNN nor Fox are carrying this story:

<>OXFORD (Reuters) - One of Britain's most experienced journalists was unlawfully killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, an inquest into his death ruled on Friday, prompting calls for the perpetrators to be tried for war crimes. Veteran war correspondent Terry Lloyd, 50, who worked for ITN, was killed in March 2003 in southern Iraq as he reported from the front line during the first few days of the U.S.-led invasion.

<>"He was fired on by American soldiers as a minibus carried wounded people away," Coroner Andrew Walker said at the conclusion of the inquest, which U.S. soldiers declined to attend. "I have no doubt it was an unlawful act of fire on the minibus," Walker added. He said he intended to write to the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions in an effort to bring those responsible for Lloyd's death before a British court.
Louis Charalambous, the Lloyd family's lawyer, said those responsible for his death should be brought to trial for what he termed "a very serious war crime." "It was a despicable, deliberate, vengeful act," he added. He said the unlawful killing verdict had been "inescapable" and had come about because "U.S. forces appear to have allowed their soldiers to behave like trigger-happy cowboys"

Nearly two years ago Eason Jordan had made some comments regarding the targetting and killing of journalists by US military forces, at the World Social Forum in Davos. Shortly thereafter he was fired by CNN and was tarred and feathered by the MSM far reichstag talking pundits for merely suggesting that the US would ever do such a dastardly deed. Since then the killing has gone on, and the MSM has steadfastly avoided any mention of the stories, hoping against all hope that they would just fade away. At the time of the firing the WaPo published an essay that contained this bit:

Do US Troops Target Journalists in Iraq?

This fiery topic became a real nightmare today for the Chief News Executive of CNN at what was an initially very mild discussion at the World Economic Forum titled "Will Democracy Survive the Media?".

During one of the discussions about the number of journalists killed in the Iraq War, Eason Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.
<>Due to the nature of the forum, I was able to directly challenge Eason, asking if he had any objective and clear evidence to backup these claims, because if what he said was true, it would make Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park. David Gergen was also clearly disturbed and shocked by the allegation that the U.S. would target journalists, foreign or U.S. He had always seen the U.S. military as the providers of safety and rescue for all reporters.

What intensified the problem was the fact that the session was a public forum being taped on camera, in front of an international crowd. The other looming shadow on what was going on was the presence of a U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Senator in the middle of some very serious accusations about the U.S. military.
I am quite sure that somewhere in the Middle East, right now, his remarks are being printed up in Arab language newspapers as proof that the U.S. is an evil and corrupt nation. That is a real nightmare, because the Arab world is taking something said by a credible leader of the media (CNN!) as the gospel, or koranic truth. What is worse is that I am not really sure what Eason really meant to communicate to us, but I do know that he was quite passionate about it. Members of the audience took away what they wanted to hear, and now they will use it in every vile and twisted way imaginable.

To me, what was said can not be put back into the genie's bottle. So here is my request as a U.S. citizen, and really only a minor, minor player in the whole WEF scheme of things: Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd, you both seem like good and honest men, and Congressman Frank especially seems like someone with a bit of courage (I'm sure Senator Dodd is brave as well). Clear up this mess, use your power and authority as elected leaders, and make transparent what really happened. You must do this to respect the 12 journalists killed and let the world know how and why. Here is another challenge, and this one is for the CNN and the BBC: What the hell happened? Is Eason right or is he wrong? Good journalism calls for digging into and revealing all of the facts (or was everything that was said in the mild part of the discussion about fair coverage and seeking the truth just verbage?).

If what Eason originally said was true, exactly what happened and why needs to become known to the American public and world at large. If it is not, it is an example of how "news" is created by the heat of the moment, without any bearing to reality. If it is true, we need to know if it was official or if it was just some random disgruntled soldiers. The dark scenario, what the rest of the world would love to believe, is that the U.S. is sinister and evil and this is just another example of Darth Bush. Is this the same U.S. that I know and love, or was this just someone accidentally becoming swept up in the anti-U.S. feeling that is all pervasive in Davos (but they love us too, especially Clinton).

Gosh, if only any of these suggestions had been followed? They were not however; what immediately transpired was the firing of the Jordan. That seemed to be the only way the US powers that be could deal with the issue. Fire the man, and make it seem that he was the "loose cannon" on the deck of a perfectly steered ship of war, rather than someone speaking truth to power. Idiots like those from the WSJ made comments like this:

If Jordan ever harbored thoughts that U.S. forces had targeted journalists, a position that could be supported by the Kurtz story, then it was his duty as a newsman to pursue the story by assigning a CNN investigative team to it. If he did, I'd love to see the results. But it's fairly obvious that he didn't. Jordan's dereliction is less a mistake than it is proof of brain rot. The supreme editor of a news organization can't expect to make unsupportable inflammatory statements and maintain the respect of his truth-seeking troops at the same time. CNN did the right thing to show him the door. I would have done the same.

Even Jordan spun a recantation because the Rovian forces of Swiftboaters had launched salvo after salvo of attacks on him. His "resignation message" offered:

This is the statement Eason Jordan released tonight around 6:00 pm EST:

After 23 years at CNN, I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq.

I have devoted my professional life to helping make CNN the most trusted and respected news outlet in the world, and I would never do anything to compromise my work or that of the thousands of talented people it is my honor to work alongside.

While my CNN colleagues and my friends in the U.S. military know me well enough to know I have never stated, believed, or suspected that U.S. military forces intended to kill people they knew to be journalists, my comments on this subject in a World Economic Forum panel discussion were not as clear as they should have been.

I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise. I have great admiration and respect for the men and women of the U.S. armed forces, with whom I have worked closely and been embedded in Baghdad, Tikrit, and Mosul, in addition to my time with American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen in Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the Arabian Gulf.

"I never meant to imply" what kind of lame ass bullshit is that? How powerful are these legions of doom that control the US government and media?? Most of us knew all along the US killed journalists. They had done so during Iran/Contra and were chastized for it until Bush I pardoned the cast and crew. But now, we have the British government asking the World Court to investigate serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions in the case of one of their own from two years before Eason made any comment whatsoever. Will these Bushco apologists fall on their swords?? Will they publicly acknowledge their complicity in their role to silence criticism of these practices??? Will they come forward and investigate and report on all the other more than 100 killed. Terry Lloyd died with two other journalists, in an ambulance shot intentionally by US troops. That is the long and short of it.

I'm the decider... see heh heh heh... see.. heh heh

2006-10-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

From yesterday's press conference; count the number of times he claims to have made decisions (from David Corn).

THE PRESIDENT: Speaking about books, somebody ought to add up the number of pages that have been written about my administration. There's a lot of books out there -- a lot. I don't know if I've set the record, or not, but I guess it means that I've made some hard decisions and will continue to make hard decisions.

And...this is the -- this is about the fifth time I've been asked this type of question. And as you know, there are some things that I wish had happened differently -- Abu Ghraib. I believe that really hurt us. It hurt us internationally. It kind of eased us off the moral high ground. In other words, we weren't a country that was capable of, on the one hand, promoting democracy, and then treating people decently. Now the world has seen that we've held those to account who are -- who did this.

You know, there's just a lot of look-backs. Presidents don't get to look back, but I will tell you, the decision to remove Saddam was the right decision. And I would look forward to the debate where people debate whether or not Saddam should still be in power....So when it comes to that decision, which is a decision to cause a lot of people to write books, it's the right decision.

so what was that pesky question anyway?
So I'm wondering, is there anything you wish you would have done differently with regard to Iraq?

oops, nothing about any books in the question so to speak, nor was there any effort to respond to the question either. Oh well, he's the decider see, and he gets to decide what he decides to say.

Herr pResident orders us to fugedabodit

2006-10-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday that former Rep. Mark Foley's behavior toward former congressional pages was "disgusting" but predicted that voters would care more about the economy and national security than the ex-Florida lawmaker in next month's election. "I know this Foley issue bothers a lot of people, including me, but I think when they get in that booth they are going to be thinking about how best to secure the country from attack and how best to keep the economy going," Bush said in response to a question at his Rose Garden news conference.

See it is really easy. He speaks, Fox listens, tells its constituency to act, they follow, GOP stays in power. and whatever they do, they must not think about GOP's glaring social conservative hypocrisy, nor the Iraq and Afghan war, nor the national debt, nor the failing to act on any legislation Congress, nor the crisis in health care for the vast majority of citizens, nor anything else except: that the GOP can run a better police state and give more tax cuts to the wealthiest citizens. If you look at the canned adds that the GOP Senate and Congressional candidates are running right now this is their only message. The Dems are weak on security and will raise taxes.

There is zero substance to any discourse on the issues, and mere platitudes concerning the most corrupt and now nefariously disgusting behavior of the party leadership. There is only fluff and smoke and illusion. The US is in deep shit, and put there by bushco intentionally. Yet the MSM and the GOP candidates are being told not to discuss that at all. So please remember, do only what your lead says, all else is treason.

stay the course??? mmmm..

2006-10-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

Let's see how many courses we know have open-ended successful outcomes??

Well, the analogy must come from sailing on the oceans, as in "stay on course, mark such and such, bearing such and such, speed such and such." These types of courses have specific navigable requirements however. They go from point A to point B and so forth, with an end point necessary to facilitate the proper charting of the course in the first place. These courses, and their ever important course corrections, require prior knowledge of hazards, location of key celestial and terrestrial triangulation vertices, and capacity to change course in case of emergencies and obstacles. The only way one could endlessly stay on course would be for the watercraft to have suffered severe damage to its steering systems: broken or stuck rudder, loss of propulsion (set adrift from staying on course), loss of command and control function, and so forth.

Golf courses, have 19th holes of course. The last hole, the finishing stop, the end of the course, the goal so to speak of staying on course until the outcome is achieved. Several things can get one off the course, most important of which is threatening and bad weather (lightning, tornado, high dangerous winds, massive flooding downpours, etc.) or some other catastrophe in the capacity to actually stay on course and play (injury to self or party, loss of balls, crash of carts, dropping of clubs in lake). In each of these sorts of cases when staying on course is no longer intelligent, safe, healthy, useful, the parties choose to immediately go to the 19th hole and claim satisfaction that they arrived at the goal.

Race courses--such as auto, motorcycle, horse, and so forth--are closed looped, and thus staying on course is relatively easy in terms of knowing where the course is going. Completing each circuit represents the fine tuning of the knowledge required to stay on course, but likewise increases the chances of being taken off course. All sorts of crises make getting off course critically important for survival. Hell they shoot horses don't they???

Distance race courses for running, ride and tie, triathlons, etc. are more open-ended yet have all manner of safety and health checks, backup systems, provisions and equipment support, and so far forth. Thus if a runner/rider on the Western States Marathon, or Tevis Cup Ride and Tie, wishes to stay on course, to the finish line (ah yes, forgot to mention that these courses have finish lines where the course officially ends), that person must abide by the decisions of officials evaluating and judging that individuals capacity to stay on course. Many problems get people yanked from the course, and only those who exhibit the best strategies, tactics, equipment, and most of all training, are allowed to stay on course to compete until they reach the finish line and achieve the goal.

There are lots of other courses too: curricula, technical training, safety screenings, rudimentary skills acquisition, testing of manpower and equipment, etc. All of these have clearly defined check points, benchmarks, checks for understanding, analyses, achievement criteria, and other markers that determine if the path of the course is optimal and meeting the objectives as outlined before beginning the course. We can certainly see why Bushco is trying now to deny that they ever mentioned staying on course in the first place. It was idiotic for them to phrase it that way; they have demonstrated that they do not belong on course; they have failed to specify their desired outcomes; they simply are not on course, except possibly one that is headed for crashing on some sub-surface rocks that will destroy the ship and all aboard.

2006-10-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

Len Hart writes today:

I suppose I should indulge a bit of Schadenfreude. For years, from obscurity, I have been yelling that the policies of George W. Bush have made terrorism worse, alienated friends, confirmed potential enemies, and, in short, made Americans less safe, despised, reviled around the world. Bush's polices were bone-headed -- misunderstanding and misstating the nature of terrorism and, worse, failing to address it. There was some hope even among liberals that Bush's invasion of Afghanistan might bring an acknowledged terrorist to justice -- hopes dashed when Bush, himself, made of our nation a rogue state with a pattern of ineffective, ham fisted, policies. Under Bush, we became a rogue state, little better -- if at all -- from terrorists themselves. Bush's body count in Iraq alone far surpasses those of either Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein -- whom Bush calls terrorist and dictator.

Among Bush's policy blunders, he arrogantly dismisses the principles of Geneva, Nuremberg and the other treaties to which the US is not merely obliged -- we helped write many of them. Bush has thus abjured the very principles which had -- until Bush -- distinguished America from the dictatorial regimes of Hussein, Pinochet, Pol Pot et al. We have -- under Bush -- become the world's number one terrorist threat.

So my question is: "When will the next superpower military force decide that it is time for regime change for the torturous evil US totalitarian Bushco government?" Seems to me we as a nation have just joined the parade of thugs and villians, hellbent on incresing the strength and might of the chosen few at the expense of the masses wellbeing, freedom, and safety. Welcome to the rest of the 21st century.

thick thick smoke, and it's getting hot in here

2006-09-30T12:07:00.000-07:00

What happens when we combine these two stories on the same day that the major news should have been openly dissecting and discussing the abandonment of the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions by the Bush Administration??? Can you say distraction??

<>The resignation rocked the Capitol, and especially Foley’s GOP colleagues, as lawmakers were rushing to adjourn for at least six weeks. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert assured him “we’re taking care of it.”
It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took. His spokesman had said earlier that the speaker did not know of the sexually charged e-mails between Foley and the boy.

So they know about this for four months, do nothing until the story comes out, and time the responses to the same day as the Freedom to Torture bill is based. More intriguing however is Hastert's immediate response. Rather than admit he knew anything (and his own website changed the time frame of the story later in the day), or do much more than accept Foley's resignation, Hastert goes on the evening Fox news cycle and spins this drek:

HASTERT: I think what they do is, they are so bent on protecting criminals and going through the process and not expediting these people who really want to take our lives, to murder us, and you know, we’ve seen it time and time again. We just saw it just now with the ms-13 gangs, trying to stop them from coming into the country and the liberal Democrats in the Senate blocked it.

ASMAN: But again “coddling terrorists.” You say democrats are doing that. That’s really tough language.
HASTERT: I’m saying what they’re doing is they’re not allowing us to prosecute these people. They’re not allowing us to — the 130 most treacherous people, probably in the world, and they want to put them and release them out in the public eventually.

Wow, how amazing it is that he can discount the other 14,000 prisoners so casually? Or maybe it is the notion that we have convicted so many for terrorism of those we captured?? Oh, that's right we haven't been able to do that even with the illegal unconstitutional torture regimes. I am really curious who these 130 are though, because at last count the IRC talleyed more than 700 at GITMO, and every one of those who have been released from there (a couple of thousand or so) have been found to have been innocent of any charges. But Hastert, knowing the story is about supporting the elimination of the US Constitutional provisions, claims that there are these people somewhere we have been torturing who deserve that treatment and it is the Democrats fault for some reason; all the while blaming others while blowing smoke over the Foley story. Way to go Dennis, real statesmanship.

a snapshot of today's hidden news..

2006-09-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

this is a quick overview of several stories just posted today:

US Department of Energy releases study that essentially says that research shows it may already be too late to avoid the crunch of peak oil collapse.
BP opens spigot to lower prices and reduce possible Congressional action and anti-GOP sentiment in upcoming election. A third coverup of global climate change data and reports by Bushco is reported today.
US EPA releases report that states the population carrying capacity of the US environmement, with the population expected to grow towards 400 million by middle to end of 21st century, might only be 200 million or less. We are overusing our land, using too much water, polluting too much water and air, and otherwise making a giant mess of it all.
Bushco needs more war to facilitate the remaining political power they receive from defense and security contractors.
US housing bubble worsens as new inventory of available homes increases dramatically
US Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Commerce release joint report that shows a whopping 84% increase in health insurance premiums between 2000 and 2006 while overall wages grew at a measly 19.7% over the same time period and inflation 17.8%. Of course executive salaries and compensation packages grew over 250%, and that would include those of insurance industry leadership. Corporations are refusing to continue too offer health benefits.

can it get worse... just wait...

one of them meme thangs....

2006-09-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

If you make a music mix that is a reflection of your informative years, what would those dozen or so songs be, and maybe more interesting, why? You don't have to be proud of the song choices - they're not necessarily a reflection of taste, more about your history.

First we need to dispense with "informative years," then get to the implied difference between relative value of my history, versus long term recognition of influence and inspiration. I will accept the construct "informed" to apply to inherent (and coherent) integration of this or that particular piece of music to my development of my personhood: personality, spiritual consciousness, aesthetic values, shared relations with the world and people around me, and so far forth. However, for this exercise, i will rule out the years of developmental relations with music, the pubescent and adolescent period, because, although that music underlies and seriously informs the constructs of one's life, i acknowledge that those influences were largely unconscious. Rather i would prefer to look at music that is representative of serious personal choices, and/or relationships to events through and with the music.

So, let's quickly dispense with the obvious. I contracted mononucleosis and hepatitis during my junior year of high school and spent 8 weeks essentially isolated in convalescence. That happened to be the Spring semester of 1964, when the British invasion hit the US, and all over all radio one heard Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Dave Clark Five, etc. So those influences, stripped as they were of social relations and interactions, were absorbed into my core developing adult consciousness, and remain to this day. I have seen most of Stones tours since, still greatly appreciate Ray Davies, and always enjoy anything by the Beatles. That isn't the music i want to talk about.

No, the most significant musical intervention into my life must have been Dylan songs played by the early Grateful Dead (1966/1967). It was a synthesis, under the influence of lots of legal (cough cough) koolaid (and thus opening my consciousness to undo nearly two decades of imprinting), of all of the forms of music i had previously found near and dear to me. From CA surf guitars and drums, through folk and doo-wap ballads, to british rock blues and R&B, all amalgamated with psychedelicized classical forms (i played in orchestras and concert bands from the age of six to 17). The Grateful Dead were, are, and will be the music that informs me. Thus, music that has come to me through my interest and experience with the GD, is also part of that which informs me.

Bill Graham made an effort to tie SanFran 60's psychedelic music with other forms at his Fillmore and Winterland shows. Introduced to that diversity of forms and genres played by the best of the best, certainly influenced and informed my life. Watching Miles (playing with his Algartha and Pangaea band) at shows, waiting for the Dead to come on profoundly changed how i viewed the jazz i had learned to play back in the early 60's. Same can be said for Weather Report and so many other legends. There was the time that the GD (who controlled what music was played through their sound systems) introduced the crowd at intermission to the music of the young angelic voice of Dolly Parton, and later to Olatunji and Baba Maal.

If i am asked to pick others i have to go with:
Country Joe and the Fish whose sound and voice are found now in Widespread Panic
Quicksilver Messenger Service (early days) carried into the 21st century with My Morning Jacket
Love and Kaleidescope preparing the way for Queen or Sting to Bardo Pond and Molehill Orkestrah
Massive Attack along with Portishead are in my collection because of my sensitivities to Joan and Joni;

but perhaps the most impactful of all is the single David Crosby solo album: If I Could Only Remember My Name that took all of the SanFran/LA psychedelia and moved it into the 21st century 35 years ago. Today i find Godspeed You Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky still hovering in that space. Along with so many many others from Dave Mathews to the Shins, Killers, Pixies, Calexico, Tea Leaf Green, Scott Law Band, etc. et al and so forth.

Lastly my world is only complete because of Frank Zappa who took me back to my father's fascination with Ken Nordine, Spike Jones, Ernie Kovacs, and spewed it into the 22nd century and further. Without Frank i would never have fully appreciated rap/hiphop/poetryslam jam performances rooted in protest and angst and anger with the world. Frank was the master of that synchretic form spewing joy and humor across the worst of our species behaviors calling us out for all of our stupidities and arrogance. Frank was one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time....

property is a privilege not a right

2006-09-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

I am going to make this simple and explicit. The next time some objectivist libertarian type tries to tell you property is a right, and is natural like: life, liberty, faith, belief, learning, pursuing happiness, being, etc., turn to them and tell them to "fuck off." They are blowing the proverbial fascist smoke up your ass. Property as a right, requires fundamentally taking and controlling something that can never actually belong to you. Property is acquired initially through violence, controlled by coercive threats, fear, intimidation and violence. It is inextricably linked to power, manifested either physically or economically. There can be no right, when one agent (governmental, military, posse, gang, bank, financial institution, etc.) takes the property and holds it claiming it is their right to "own" it. We can't own a piece of the planet, we can't own material possessions, we can't own children, we can't own space. Everytime some white dude in the US claims they own a home on some land, they are doing so intentionally ignoring the history of violence and genocide that allowed them to acquire the land in the first place. They fund through the one set of taxes they must hold dear, the security apparatus necessary to protect their property against others who, like them, want to take it and hold it. If a something can only be acquired and controlled through fear, it is not a right.