Fighting Climate Change Through Prevention

In this article in the NY Times, analysts correctly ascertain that climate change could result in threats to national interest. What is sad about this form of analysis–which as, of course, the FOXNews reporting eagerly highlights (Climate Change Could Warrant U.S. Military Action)–is the reactive mentality that this lends to the debate about policy and strategy. Instead of talking about methods of combating climate change in terms of establishing carbon emission reducing policies, funding ‘green’ technologies, and mitigation of climate change in those areas most affected, war hawks eagerly begin anticipating increasing weapons cachets and military budgets. But what good will it do to send in troops to areas devastated by climate change? That’s like trying to staunch a wound with a toothpick. The only effective measures we can take to address the potential threats to U.S. interests and security from climate change will be preventative: through policy, funding, and diplomacy. And that must happen now, not later.

My $.02 On Health Care Reform

Health care reform. Does it need to happen?  Is it going to happen? Does it require an inclusive public health insurance option? God yes. Depends on your idea of reform. And yes.

This is a sticky issue that has been largely avoided by politicians who don’t want to tango with sticky issues. Props to Mrs. Clinton for even attempting it years ago, back when it should have been done. President Obama has elected to tackle it head on, and the issue has punctured his seeming political invincibility. But one cannot dock him points for giving it an honest effort. He could just sit back on his ranch and pretend that allowing the status quo to continue is the right thing for all Americans, not just the top 5%.

It’s amazing how much debate there even is revolving around the issue of public health coverage. Apparently the reality has been rendered so opaque to analysis that many a folk appears to have missed the obvious: that national health care coverage needs to be as universal as possible, or else all public health, both nationally and globally, is endangered. That’s the reality. Now the other reality at the moment, politically speaking, is how do we pay for it. But to me, at least, the answer to this is also clear: we need to tax the rich and use that money to cover public health insurance. The poor have never been able to afford health insurance. That’s why they go to the ER and make the public pay for it anyway. And the middle class can no longer afford health insurance either. Why? Because it’s big business. Health care is a luxury in this country. But public health can not be relegated to luxury/big business status. If we do not cover the majority of the population, then all of the population is put in grave danger due to outbreaks of disease. Evolved microbes do not recognize class distinctions.

A sidebar on “middle class”: apparently, the President seems to consider households that make below $250,000 a year to be “middle class”. I’m sorry, but if your household is making that much, then you are not middle class. You are doing just fine. You should be paying higher taxes so that the rest of us can get health care.

A Tribute to MJ

I made some offhand comments a few posts back which were disparaging about Mr. Jackson, and I want to temper them with positive stuff, because he is, after all, the figurehead of pop culture in a truly global sense. Let’s be honest: the dude was kind of weird. But so has been most every other pop cultural icon, and no other has been as big as Michael Jackson. The man was a live wire dancer, electrically consumed, filled with spectacular light and fizz and energy. His performances were his gift to the world.

He became an almost hermaphroditic figure, sphinx-like in his crumbling plastered facade. As strange as he may have been, though, there was always something remotely accessible about him, something tangibly innocent and pure. The child-like joy that he conveyed through his dancing and high-pitched squeals of singing glee resonates with us all. Whatever we may think about his personal existence, no one can deny the appeal of Michael Jackson the pop artist. Not even himself. He didn’t seem capable of creating an inner persona that could exist outside of his own legend.

But his struggle with identity is the struggle of any artist that has grown up with fame. It ruins and ravages people, and that is the sap and succor of the tabloid gossip hounds. I don’t believe that he ever molested children or that he had any interest in doing so. Number one, because he has never been convicted in a court of law, which in this country is supposed to mean that he is innocent of all charges. Number two, because I think he truly loved children, just as he loved the child within himself. His work with charities for children should speak for itself. He was a sensitive soul, and the tragedy of Michael Jackson was perhaps the tragedy of being surrounded by unscrupulous people who took advantage of him.

In any case, the man is gone, leaving behind a legacy that can no longer be tarnished or sullied by anyone anymore. His music will live on, just as he knew it would. And we will continue to listen to his best songs, over and over again, and they will never get old.

New Paradigm

You may have noted that I have been relatively quiet on the political/news front as of late, mostly because I don’t have any free time anymore, but furthermore because I think that most of the events, such as Obama’s inauguration, speak for themselves and we are all somewhat inspired and hopeful for the future, finally. But there are a few things that I want to say about the pressing economic and political events of our time.

First of all, former George W. Bush’s presidency was a complete and abject failure. Please, let’s not forget that. There have been a lot of interviews and articles before the switch-over that offered a somewhat benign retrospective of Bush’s reign, and it looks like reporters have been attempting to remain “objective” by entertaining the notion that Bush may have represented integrity because he never backed down from doing whatever the fuck he wanted, or something like that.

Bush was a terrible mistake, and a giant mar on the already besotted history of US politics. He stood as a representative not of personal integrity, but rather as the exact negative of what a leader should be. He didn’t listen to his opponents nor his own constituency. He didn’t utilize diplomacy in dealing with world bodies and foreign leaders. He took more vacations than any other president in history. His administration was peppered by yes-men, neo-cons, and nepotism. This is completely ignoring the myriad scandals that marred his administration. Basically, he didn’t do anything that he was supposed to do as a LEADER. The real “leadership” in the Bush presidency were the people who actually ran things, such as his vice-president and Karl Rove. Presidents in the past have oft been puppets on strings, such as Reagan, but at least Reagan had charisma and could instill some kind of false confidence, even when his actual policies resulted in terrible outcomes that we are still paying for today.

So yes, thank god we have closed that terrible chapter in our history. But we will be continuing to pay for those 8 years of bullshit for a long time hence, Obama or not. The Republican Party, as evidenced by their cold response to bipartisanship in the passing of the stimulus plan, are awaiting an eventual rebuttal to the centrism of the Obama presidency. They will do all they can do to ensure that his policies fail, so that they can renew their onslaught of the poor and middle class. Bear that in mind in the coming years: W. Bush was not an anomaly. He was the epitome of hard-line right-wing divisiveness. And again, let me be perfectly clear about the policies of such an administration: they failed. Period. They will never be effective. The myth of free market capitalism has been—with finality—debunked.

The history that Obama has made in his ascendance to the American presidency is not simply about a black man becoming a US President, nor reductively about simple “change”: it is about the forceful backing of an American public for a government that will utilize its policies for greater control and responsibility of economic tides. A government that does what it is supposed to do, rather than absolving itself of any and all responsibility beyond that of blatant militarism.

Now I want to discuss these “tough economic times,” as they like to say everyday on the news. This is indeed a time when the failed economic policies of the past are coming home to roost. This is also a time when “the American people” are beginning to pay for their years of living wantonly off of money that they never had and never will have. This is a time when issues of sustainability are no longer simply concerns of hippies, but of academic professors and Washington policy wonks. This is a time when America has to wake up to the fact that we have been sleeping, while the rest of the world has been quietly surpassing us in their investment in business and educational competitiveness.

Even though comparisons to the Great Depression can be fruitful simply for waking up people to the fact that this recession is real and its effects on people devastating, let’s also abstain from going too far. No one is jumping out of windows on Wall St. The lines for unemployment may be exceedingly long, but there’s no extensive lines for soup kitchens, at least, not yet. Retail chains that have stretched themselves too thin on the promise of endless sales have indeed been shutting their doors. Banks are decisively slimming their ranks with a butcher’s knife. And this impact cannot be understated on the economy nor on men and women now without salaries. But for many, it also doesn’t mean much of anything other than that they won’t waste their money like they might have before. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Because the fact is that transitioning into what they call a “green” economy can not be easy, nor even possible without the recognition that it is necessary. These “tough economic times” are not about a housing market bubble collapsing, nor about over-investment in bad securities and over-lending of easy credit: it is about the transition into a new economic and political and social paradigm. A paradigm in which we recognize our interdependence on each other and other nations, acknowledge the interconnectivity of mankind with that of the earth, and begin to take responsibility for the actions not only of ourselves, but of our governments and world bodies.

So as tough as these times are—and yes, these times are tough for me personally, thank you very much—they are also a necessary time for buckling down and gaining a clearer vision of what we need to achieve.

Look at how far we’ve come

I don’t really like saying “I told you so,” but. . . just re-read this past post of mine to see how far we’ve come as a nation. Now do you still think all Americans are stupid?

It’s Obama Time

Well, I’m staying up past my bed time, which means 5 hours 4 hours of sleep or so tonight, but what the hell. I feel the need to post something; what was once only oft a means of circumventing loneliness or merely a form of mental masturbation has now become a luxury in my life.

First of all, what can I say about Obama getting elected? It has turned from hope beyond hope into reality. It is a paradigm changing event. I went to bed once he took Ohio, but couldn’t sleep anyhow because everyone in my neighborhood proceeded to uncork champagne bottles, scream, and set off firecrackers once he had reached the necessary amount of electoral votes. I went to sleep happy.

I then attended some management training classes for 2 days, which were useful even if only for ascertaining that I’ve learned much of the right stuff mostly on my own already. I think the Tao Te Ching is ultimately the best piece of literature on effective management techniques.

Obama seems to have taken to heart the Tao Te Ching. He is able to influence vast and sweeping change without appearing to break a sweat. He knows how to let others act and speak for him, how to maintain constant discretion, discipline and restraint. He is indeed a capable leader.

If ever there was a “mandate” behind an election, I think this has been it. Regulation and the curtailing of unrestrained markets have been given a clear green light, which sets the stage, finally, for a possible regenerative economy and environmentally sound agenda.

To be perfectly honest, I think electing Obama came down to a matter of our children’s survival. We would have been fucked otherwise. Free market capitalism and individual rights to do whatever they damn well please is apparent as no longer viable in an age when the failure of an emerging nation to develop its economy and to sustain its natural resources is recognized as critically important to the success of rich nations. An interdependent globe is only as strong as its weakest link.

So thank god Obama is our president. The world and the sane members of the United States can collectively breathe a sigh of relief. Now it’s time, finally, to get to the real work of dealing with the mess we are in. Let’s get to it.

In other news, I am now engaged. You heard it here first.

Death of laissez faire?

The Economist posted an interesting article defending free-market capitalism. What surprised me about this article is how unusually defensive, clear and one-sided its perspective is. While I agree in principle with the premise that what we need is “not bigger government, but better government”, I think the author mistakes the movement in general towards greater regulation and government oversight. No one wants a communist government nor to refute capitalism (other than for fringe idealists who don’t understand economics), nor, for that matter, to overly constrain the market economy. We simply want government to do what it is supposed to do—formulate responsible policies and regulations—rather than sit idly by and allow the market to run wanton (and destroy the environment in the process).

Part of this is making government policy and electoral processes more transparent and efficient, which entails utilizing internet and software technology. That means streamlining government, not adding to its bureaucracy. I don’t think that the way to the future lies in more overtly “Great Society” type of programs, but rather in simply attempting to bring the government back up into the present age, to keep up with businesses and civil society.

I would like to say much more on this timely and interesting topic, but I have to dash out the door to work right now. Talk amongst yourselves.

The Bigger Picture, Based on Our Current State of Affairs

Well, it’s ’bout time for me to post some thoughts about the current state of the world. I sometimes wish that I had a column in a major newspaper, so that I could generate national debate and establish talking points for The View. But, alas, my blog is just too random, too all-over-the-place, too largely mundane and only intermittently insightful, too much me, to ever hold such a place in the pantheon of established punditry. I wouldn’t have it any other way, of course. I will hold forth, in any case, as if the entire world listens attentively to my every last quest for meaning.

To the point: the major news item on our collective plate is the economy. We all know that the “bailout” plan, as it is called, is pretty much a bunch of hogwash, but we also all know that we need to do something, and not many of us are economically minded enough to know quite what that is. We just know that we want our retirement funds to stop being depleted, etc. First of all, I recommend checking in with Paul Krugman’s blog from time to time for some academic economic insight parsed down, relatively speaking, for the average Joe. He has written a short paper explaining what he thinks is going down right now, and to parse it even more simply into my own think-speak, it basically has to do with the global interdependence of financial markets. Which is why shortly after our economy started nose diving, the European economy has started feeling the effects of free-fall gravity as well.

If you follow my random output of thought consistently, then you’ve noted that I have a certain fascination with the concept of interdependence (go ahead and check out my posts filed under the topic of ‘interconnectivity‘ if you don’t believe me). I see interdependence, interconnectivity, the intwinement of multiple beings into one collective entity, as a source of greater strength. An individual vulnerability that establishes greater collective depth and power. This is the strength of the artist, the strength of the family, the strength of the nation. It makes us more open to superficial attack, but better resilient to sustained barrages.

Our economy—and hence, the global economy—is undeniably, at this point, in for some hard times. For how long, of course, no one can say. I have discussed elsewhere about how the economy is inevitably headed towards seeming disaster, but also about how what appears as tragic at the moment could potentially turn into a deeper manifestation of something necessary and redemptive i.e. the movement towards a more sustainable society. However, this transformation can only occur if we are willing to make some changes, such as move towards more Democratic—even *gasp* Socialist—notions of political governance as opposed to continuously giving in to Republican “small-government, big business” ideals. Obviously, putting Barack Obama into office is a great first step on this path. But beyond the presidential campaign, we need to push much harder for a move towards responsible government policy and regulation.

It’s sort of ridiculous that it takes a crisis or tragedy for people to awaken to the importance of individual sacrifice for collective betterment. It’s what we do in hard times, and it’s what people who live in poverty always do: help each other out. It’s about time that we start taxing the rich, taxing or putting caps on destructive and wasteful practices (such as lawns, SUVs, and plastic product packaging), and investing back into our society as a whole.

We all know that Communism and/or Fascism has failed. We all know that we believe in freedom and democracy for all. But it’s time that we grew up and recognized, as mature adults, that firm regulation, investments, and incentives must be established for people and businesses to do the right thing. And we must further recognize that we can’t go this alone. We need Government, with a capital ‘G’, and that means ‘G’ as in Global in addition to national. The US, for far too long, has been able to get away with insouciant and unconsidered behavior because we once were a superpower. We will henceforth be known as the last of the world’s superpowers. There will be no more superpowers, just as there will be no more Picassos. There will always be nations that have greater power, just as there will always be individuals who have greater influence. But no longer will there be a singular entity that can completely dominate and determine the direction of world commerce or culture.

What does this mean for us as a nation, and as individuals, then? It means that we have to become a team player. It means that we have to know our place in the world. It means that we have to not only compete, but cooperate. That’s what it means, at an extremely basic and fundamental level.

This ultimately ties back into deeper issues such as environmental stewardship, spirituality as opposed to religious fundamentalism, scientific advancement and technological development coupled with social progress, etc. But I’m not going to get into any of those wonderful issues at the moment because I’m beginning to get sleepy, and I’ve got another long week looming ahead of me. Due to my inability to post as frequently as I would like to, I’m going to begin utilizing WordPress’ nifty new function of sticking old posts up on my front page, so that you can see some selections of my old shit that I feel is worth perusing. Til next time, piiiiigs iiiin spaaaaaaace. . .

A Splash of Liquor to the Earth for David Foster Wallace

I just randomly came across a piece in NY Times that seemed to be an obituary for David Foster Wallace. I didn’t understand how this could be, as he was still a young (relatively speaking) author full of potential. I was saddened to discover that he had hanged himself 2 days ago.

I had just picked up a book of his in the library, Oblivion, a collection of short stories published in 2004. I stopped reading it after a couple of stories because the author seemed disconnected from his subjects and just a little too clever for his own good. But I had loved Infinite Jest when I read it in my senior year of high school. It is a postmodern tour de force: indulgent, discursive, wordy, subversive, parodic, witty, and just plain intelligent and well-written fun.

I also loved his collection of essays and articles in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, most especially the one on his acerbic take on the culture of cruise ships. David Foster Wallace (it seems impossible to state just his last name) possessed an intelligence and irony so penetrating that it seemed almost to turn in on itself, wrapping his writing in a blanket of disassociative tangents and footnotes that were all the more entertaining for their self-conscious stylization, ridiculousness, and biting wit.

It is truly a loss to the literary world that he chose to take his own life rather than stoop down to bestow the rest of us with another work of cynical genius. We will cherish Infinite Jest all the more for its singular—now, tragic—majesty.

American Change (Outside of the Box of Media)

Inevitability: this is the crushing weapon that the Republican party so effectively wields, bludgeoning the American public with such a banality of lies, misinformation, and bluntness of political manipulation—all oriented around sidestepping deeper issues of actual policy—that people talk wearily of the inevitability of McCain being elected president. Here are the arguments for this position:

The American vote is skewed towards the middle American states, where most Americans are so brainwashed that they would vote for a melon if they thought it stood for fundamentalist Christian values and gun rights.

Americans are simply stupid in general.

George W. Bush was elected for 2 terms. Enough said. Americans are hopeless.

These are perhaps convincing arguments if you tend towards fatalism. However, it disregards and slanders the majority of the American people. Yes, many Americans are extremely misinformed and formulate their political ideas based on petty and irrelevant issues. Yes, the vote is heavily skewed towards Americans who think red meat, rifles, and religion are the defining issues of our day. However, these Americans, known colloquially as rednecks, are the ones most affected by bad policy in Washington. They will be the ones losing the most jobs, they will be the ones most affected by environmental degradation, they will be the ones continuing to have their working wages taxed by a government they distrust and loathe.

Were they fooled by W. Bush? To a certain extent. But they understood, more fundamentally, that he stood for status quo. He would give us exactly what they thought America stood for: individualism, small government, and big business. Now McCain is playing the status quo card once again, while pretending to give just enough of a hip “maverick”-ness to the situation to win over those on the fence.

Many Americans, while the economy was still apparently riding high, didn’t want change. They called for status quo. They called for continuing to do just what America had been doing. It seemed to work, sort of.

Now it’s not working. It’s failing terribly. And the prospect before us is harrowing. Even while official analysts shrug and dismiss the current economic downfall and refuse to call it a recession, Americans who are most affected by the downturn know exactly what it is: hard times. Unemployment is high, the divide between rich and poor is untenable, health care consists of ER visits, basic food item costs are increasing, and SUVs no longer make much sense to working folk who can’t pay off their mortgages or credit card bills.

This has not much to do with failed foreign policy that has led to neverending warfare, or a regressive position against contemporary science. It doesn’t even have to do with the impending and disastrous consequences of climate change, nor with the depletion of topsoils and overall degradation of our earth.

It has to do with a fundamental flaw in the American conception of what has been working in the past, and what will work in the future.

We fought ferociously against the concepts and institutions of communism and socialism, and we relished the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. It was the triumph of capitalism. It was the triumph of individual choice, freedom of markets, competition between all for the benefit of the common good.

We’ve been so knee-jerk allergic to ideas of government involvement in economics that we’ve failed (officially) to recognize that the times have changed. A little dose of government intervention is necessary in times of crisis. And therefore, the Democratic vision of politics is no longer quite as unsavory as it once was. The idea of “change” (in the sense of a non-Republican dominated government) has begun to make sense. The status quo is driving America to its knees before the world. The dollar is falling, our imperialist foreign policies are antiquated, and our fierce individualism is costing the entire world the possibility of dealing effectively with united stances against climate change.

I don’t think Americans are as stupid as the media and the Republican party assumes it is. I think that the majority of Americans simply allow themselves to be led when they see no reason to change the way things are, when it seems to benefit them. It is becoming quite apparent that change—real change—must occur for America to remain a viable force in our world. Our businesses will fail if they cannot innovate. They cannot innovate if the government does not provide incentives for them to innovate. The government cannot provide incentives if the people do not call for policy change.

The time has come for Americans to unite, truly unite, not in the sense of warfare, not in the sense of blind following of political deceit and big money, not in the sense of willful ignorance and bigoted small-mindedness. Americans will unite because the only path to a hopeful future is clear. And it is not the status quo.

The Teetering Unifocalism of the Republican Party

Well, so the question in the presidential campaign of the moment is: will the blatant strategic political maneuvering of the Republican party, which has worked so well for Bush/Cheney, still work its deceitful magic and captivate big media and its captive conservative audience? I think another phrasing of this question is: are Americans as a nation still too easily manipulated and gullible to put 2 and 2 together?

The media has been blabbering ecstatically about the strategic “daring” of McCain’s pick of an almost neolithically conservative Alaskan woman, but let’s recognize it for what it is: an act of both cynicism and desperation. The strategy behind it is obvious: pick a woman to appeal to women voters, as well as to pretend that suddenly McCain is a progressive (simply because he’s picked a woman), while at the same time, conversely, appealing to their essential Christian Coalition base of voters, because Palin may be a nice looking woman, but she’s also a Christian fundamentalist.

To the Republican strategists, who are always eager to harness the most unsavory aspects of fundamentalist religion (whether Christian or Islamic) to garner power, such an act of political theater is hardly daring. It is right in line with the type of cynical PR strategy that’s been used for Bush and his administration time after time. To the rest of the nation, however, I hope that this act of desperation is seen through for what it is: a demonstration of what McCain and his backers are really about: a blind grab for power at all costs, utilizing any means and political posing that will take them there. Please note that Obama chose his VP carefully, picking someone who not only would aid him strategically in winning the bid for presidency, but would more importantly serve as a strong addition to the White House in the role of Vice President.

It’s no secret that Palin has absolutely none of the qualities (she’s currently got a scandal brewing in Alaska) nor experience (they say that Obama is inexperienced? Give me a break.) to serve our nation as an effective Vice President. She’s just there to fill a symbolic strategic role. Seen for what it is, this purpose is actually quite demeaning to women. McCain’s pick for VP is not daring at all; it’s a pathetic excuse to try to gather in a hypothetical mass of voters who would judge only on shallow appearance. The Republicans are hoping that with enough of the media (we all know that Fox will be doing the cheerleading) in their pocketbooks, they can manage to mockingly sweep aside the obvious implications of their strategy.

So the question is: does this approach of putting voters into one-dimensional boxes really work? They have looked at the power of the votes of women, they have noted the power Hillary Clinton generated amongst women voters, and they have single-mindedly decided that women will vote for women. How incredibly reductionist of the plurality of identities that women can occupy beyond their gender designation. Did they stop to consider that women may have supported Hillary not simply because she is a woman who champions women’s rights, but furthermore because she is an incredibly intelligent and adept public representative?

This ploy is desperate because it demonstrates that however strategic and cynical this maneuver was, ultimately, it means that McCain’s puppet-masters are responding to the tone that Obama has set in the campaign, rather than calling the shots. Obama has struck the chord in America that finally, we have a politician with integrity, someone with energy, populist agendas, and the diplomacy and intelligence to work across partisan divides. Obama has run his campaign stressing the importance of change and a new direction in American politics. McCain has been turning against his own record in Washington by now pretending to be a “maverick” and “progressive.” He has positioned himself as a decoy of change by simulating seemingly progressive stances, such as picking a woman as VP and verbally denouncing our dependence on foreign oil. Wow, how progressive of him. Good thing his VP strongly supports big oil, has already demonstrated political abuse of power in her home state, and is fiercely anti-abortion.

So will the desperate and cynical strategems of the Republican party work this time around, even when Bush and his party’s popularity is at an all-time low, both within the nation and around the globe? Will the farce of Republican progressive change win over the true progressive agenda of Obama? Will the decoy win over the real thing? Superficiality over integrity?

I think not. There was a lot of true positive energy generated at the Democratic National Convention. There was a palpable force felt in that stadium that reached out across the dry and drab news network television coverage. The hunger for real change stirs somewhere in America, and I don’t think it’s just in liberal enclaves. People are waking up to the cynical, power and money hungry political maneuvering that operated the Bush administration, and hopefully, they have learned to navigate past the bland relativism presented by the media, where somehow truth seems to have no meaning until it’s already too late.

I believe the one-dimensional, unifocal political strategies of McCain’s puppet-masters will fall over on themselves. They have built the fantasies up a little too high this time around. Casting Bush Jr. as a born-again working rural man with divine conviction may have worked for a little while, but casting McCain as a simultaneous agent of progressive change AND conservative fundamentalism is just too much of a stretch. It can readily be seen through to what it is: a blind and misguided and desperate fumbling for power by a Republican party riddled with cronyism, corruption, scandals, and neo-conservative simple mindedness.

I will enjoy watching their politics of deceit finally topple over and fail in the public eye. Like Obama said in his speech at the convention: “they just don’t get it.”

Think Politics Are Tired? Think Again.

I don’t care if you are Republican, Green Party, or Anarchist: watch Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. This is what we all have been aching for. It is graceful, eloquent, emotional, direct, forceful, filled to the brim with conviction, politically adept, aggressive, embracing, beautiful, and intelligent enough to wow all the politicos and policy whonks.

And watch the Obama biography video that came directly before his speech as well. It’s truly powerful, and it answers the questions that people on the fence that don’t know much about Obama might have. He is the candidate that America so desperately needs.

Do I sound captivated? Don’t take my word for it. Don’t listen to the talking heads on television. Go see this shit for yourself. It’s wonderful, and it will make you not only believe in politics, it will make you believe in the promise of America again. Really.

Heath Ledger’s Joker = Marlon Brando

I just watched The Dark Night, and I’m not going to comment on the lengthy and vivid content, as I’m still a bit wide-eyed and overwhelmed at the moment, and I’m sure there’s little I can add that hasn’t been already widely discussed and ingested by the body politic. However, I did want to make an observation on Heath Ledger’s performance as Joker: did anyone else notice just how uncannily similar his performance is to Marlon Brando in The Last Tango In Paris? Similarities listed below:

1) The kind of wild, almost shoulder length hair

2) The crinkled forehead

3) The frequent licking of the lips

4) The discursive, high pitched voice

5) The crazed, yet intelligent, yet brutal manners

Obama’s Speech on Racial Issues

Rather than heed the media’s endless spinning and soundbytes of Barack Obama’s amazing speech, read the full transcript for yourself and make your own decisions.

Disillusionment and a Comfortable Acceptance

Here’s an interesting article in the Village Voice by David Mamet on his belated discovery that he has been a closet conservative during all those years of supposed liberalism.

Love and War

Read this article in The Independent about a photojournalist’s love with a Colombian paramilitary assassin. The article also provides some interesting insight into the Colombian civil war.

Democratic Race Still On

So the race between Hillary and Obama is still on! Though I am mostly in the Obama camp myself, I respect Hillary’s intelligence and political polish, and I’m excited to see both of them competing and reflecting the political paradigm shift of the times. Both of them share the same fundamental positions—with minor differences—on policy, and both would enact much needed critical change in Washington (taking politics back to somewhere in the center, as opposed to the far, extreme, distant and cold right). Like most of my generation, I am excited simply by the fact that politics is suddenly exciting. I’ve been frustrated by apathy and withdrawal by progressive and independent voters in the past, and it’s nice to finally see some of them getting off their high horse (i.e. lazyboy sofa) to cast some votes, make some calls, sign some petitions, and get involved. That’s the only way we can get some real democracy going in this quasi-democratic nation. We’ve got to use whatever limited tools we’ve got to make whatever degree of change possible.

Clinton vs. Obama on Economic Policy

Here’s an interesting comparison in Mother Jones of the Democratic candidate’s stated positions on economic policies. Clinton comes out with the leading edge.

Obama-mento

Are you wondering whether there is any substance behind all of this Barack Obama fervor? Here is a great reference letter written by one of his friends for the Independent.

Keep the Presidential Campaigns Intelligent

Now that Obama has gained so much momentum, he’s entered into the crossfire of the Republican juggernaut media force, which means barely veiled racial slurs, fabricated insinuations of wrongdoing in the past, etc. We all know just how powerful these smear tactics are, as we’ve witnessed the ugly and expensive campaigns against Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as whosoever has dared get in the way of Dick Cheney.

Barack Obama represents a fundamental shift of political concern in the populace: people are quite clearly stating that they are fed up with corporate thieves running our economy, public administration, and public opinion. Politics as usual is not what is going to win this presidential campaign, unless all the voters that have been currently mobilized get sick and tired of the whole scene again and retreat back into apathy—if that occurred, it would be thanks to the media dragging the debate through the mud.

I think that we need to fight back against the media even carrying smear stories, which gives credence to their insinuations simply by entering the national discourse. There is obviously a certain segment of the American population which will gleefully take up the refrain, “Barack Obama is a terrorist.” But they should be obtaining that song not from major news sources; let’s leave that shit up to Rush Limbaugh and all the other big-mouths of bigotry and small-mindedness. Write or call into your paper or news station and let them know that you don’t want to see that kind of crap in this presidential campaign. Let’s hear what the candidates are saying about their political and economic positions, not about an outfit they wore as an act of diplomacy, or about their middle name. Let McCain question Barack Obama’s stance on foreign policy, not his ethnic or racial background. Let Barack Obama question McCain’s economic policy, not his personal sexual trysts.

Let’s keep this debate on the level of adults, not small-minded children. Let’s talk about issues that actually matter.

Barack Obama and “Experience”

I’ve noticed that the main “concern” voiced by other politicians and mimicked by the media in regards to Barack Obama’s candidacy is that he may lack “experience.” I find this negative appraisal a bit preposterous. In case no one has noticed, the current President is a no-good silver-spoon son who found god on the back of a dollar bill, and who has absolutely no credentials for being President other than that his daddy has a lot of connections. So now tell me, if a politician such as Barack Obama, who has integrity, who is well-spoken, intelligent, and inspirational, exactly how does this politician lack “experience” for President of the United States? Is that just a really polite and convoluted method of questioning whether he’s got the right connections?

Millionaires who can eat my poo

Are you kidding me? The New York Times runs a front-page article entitled “In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich,” in which they tell the sorrowful and tragic tale of hard-working millionaires who never feel like they have enough money. Wow, those poor, suffering millionaires, slaving away to make face. My heart bleeds, I tell you, thinking of these insecure suburban rich folk, so buffered from reality and the 40 million people living below the poverty line in the United States that they actually feel like they are poor in comparison to their billionaire neighbors. So insulated from human reality, so distanced from themselves and the 3 billion people in the world that live on less than 2 dollars a day, that they don’t even know what true wealth is.

Just goes to show you that in the areas of the greatest apparent wealth and affluence you will always find the greatest inner poverty. It makes one wonder if the New York Times pushed through this article because their intended audience is largely affluent and can relate to the woes of the Silicon Valley airheads, or simply because they knew that this article would stir up revulsion and people would read it just so they could make fun of millionaires? Either way, it’s fucking lame.

Fire Update

Best sites for checking on the updated status of the wildfire are:

Tahoe Daily Tribune — www.tahoedailytribune.com

US Forest Service Angora Fire Incident Page — inciweb.org/incident/725/

Yesterday, the winds didn’t pick up as expected, and the danger of the combination of high winds and high temperatures was thus avoided for one more day, and all day long the fire lines were strengthened. Today the winds are definitely picking up, but so far the fire has been kept under control. High winds are expected through Saturday, so it’s never quite certain how or if it will spread.

We’ve moved back into our apartment yet again, hopefully this time for good. I feel pretty confident, given that they are allowing people back into neighborhoods right along the fire line. Of course, things can change in a minute, and we’re keeping the car packed. But at least we don’t have to be driving around town and trying to figure out how to kill time.

Since I can’t get back into work, I have nothing to do, which seems like it would be a good thing—except that I have a car full of valuables so I can’t just drive anywhere, and I can’t go hiking or biking or running because the air quality is so bad that I’m coughing just from laying in bed. I wish I could enjoy this enforced vacation a little bit more, but truth be told, I’d rather be at work.

Evacuation Nation

Now it’s official; we are evacuees from the fire. Yesterday and this morning had instilled a sense of false comfort in us, and we even had just walked over to the supermarket and meat market to stock up our refrigerator. Then the wind suddenly picked up, and all hell broke loose. People were driving frantically from their houses down the street. The fire leaped across the highway and into the adjoining Tahoe Keys area. We held out for a while, knowing that the fire was still a few blocks away (I have a radio from out where I work and could hear the fire dispatches). The sky again turned into a deep hue of orange and ashes fell like dirty snow. Neighbors were, in a touching act of desperation, watering the lawns in front of our apartment complex. Our landlord went from door to door and told us that it was time to leave. We grabbed some of the yogurts that we had just bought and fruit and bread, and I grabbed my six-pack of beers and the excellent bottle of mezcal that my girlfriend had bought me in Mexico.

What is also worrying me, aside from losing the wonderful new apartment that we had just moved into (ironically enough to get away from cigarette smoke; now we’re sucking down ash and fumes from burning trees and buildings), the fire seems also poised to move into the Fallen Leaf Lake region. So great, I could also lose my employment.

In any case, after already having gone through thinking that my place had burned down, I’m a little bit more relaxed now. I know that all I can do at this time is just to wait patiently to see what occurs. Thanks, by the way, for the concern expressed by some of you, I’m perfectly fine and in no danger, other than being slightly dizzy and nauseated from breathing in smoke and ash for the last few days.

Zealotry and Fiction: Not So Distant, It Seems

If extremist fanatics wish to make their religious zeal look any more despicable and ridiculous to the rest of the world, I really do not know how they could do it: the continued fatwa on Salman Rushdie’s head, and the renewed furor against him caused by his recent knighting, serves only to make these religious zealots look like murderous retards. Have any of them read and understood The Satanic Verses? It has little to do with blasphemy, and much more to do with understanding (and damn good storytelling). But of course, such people can only read all things completely literally, and are unable to fathom depth, complexity, nor challenging themselves with differing perspectives. And they read the Qoran in just such a manner as well, and are thus able to find justification for blatantly murderous and bigoted responses to everything. Just as Christian religious extremists dig through the Bible to hunt for random verses that will support their prejudice and hatred of all perceived evils.

What I continually fail to comprehend is how people who claim to believe so strongly in something could have their faith shaken so easily by such misperceived and unimportant slights as contained within a book of fiction. While this may attest to the power of the written word and of ideas, it also attests to the fear and insecurity lying so close to the heart of fanaticism. If these people truly believe in their God and in his prophet, then they would know that this God is untouchable by insults from nonbelievers, or blasphemy by outsiders. What is important is the knowledge and faith that they have in their own hearts. But quite obviously, many of them do not have knowledge and faith in their hearts. They only have a slinking overprotective fear that turns quickly to bristling anger and direct attack in the face of any challenge.

What these so-called religious zealots fail to realize is just how apparent their own inner blasphemy is made to the rest of the world when they react in such a manner. These are not men of God. These are hypocrites and blasphemers of the worst sort, who proclaim and beat their chest about their beliefs to the world while all along they do not actually believe them in their own hearts. These are idolaters, murderers, and bigots, who have created a desperate farce of a show to demonstrate that they are righteous, that they are faithful, that they will get into heaven.

Such people earn nothing but disdain from the world, and if there is a God, then they are undoubtedly plowing themselves a direct path to Hell. This is what I think of the people who would uphold a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and of those unsavory and hypocritical businessmen who have posted bounties on his head. This is my sentence on you.

Artifacts to the Sites where they were Stolen

The US government recently tossed back some blackmarket artifacts to Perú that had been confiscated from thieves. That’s very generous of them. Now how about Yale returning its special collection of Machu Picchu artifacts to the site where they were “excavated” from?

Science Fiction Scores One For Prescience

So get this. They’ve discovered actual ‘kryptonite’ in a Siberian mine, you know that stuff that drains Superman of his powers? I think this is pretty fucking weird. When I was reading the article, I was just thinking, “stupid fucking journalists, what are they talking about?’ before I realized that they were being serious. Kryptonite’s properties are displayed in Superman Returns on the museum case from which Lex Luthor steals it. “Sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide with fluorine”—with the fundamental difference that the real-life ‘kryptonite’ does not contain fluorine. And it’s not green. And it’s actually called jadarite. But still.

Isn’t that weird? Next thing you know they’re going to discover that Star Trek was somewhat accurate in its descriptions of teleportation dynamics. . .

The Critical Importance of Articulation of What You Feel

The inability to articulate emotions results in violence. Because eventually these unsaid things must come out. And when they have been held in so long, they can only explode from the accumulated pressure. And all it was was one simple, uncomplicated thing in the beginning. All that had to be done was to string it into a sentence of words, to encircle the meaning, and to curl this message around the flying foot of a breath, into another’s listening senses, to be understood. For the message to be broken down, rearranged, responded to. And your embedded emotion has thus been realized, been carried into the world, and a little piece of you is in everything, for a little while, until you must speak again. Breathing flame into hollow forms.

Speak what you feel. Write what you feel. Play what you feel. Dance what you feel. Move what you feel.

Let it go. Let it go before you grow desperate, detached, disassociated from yourself. Let it out while you still can feel it, still relate to it, still know it as true.

There is a balance, of course. You can’t just be an unfiltered mouthpiece to the sky, like a schizo on the street, without barrier to the waves and currents of consumer culture. You’ve got to hold it within you, personalized, until a bubbled world has formed, and is ready to be released, glistening with the sun. When you feel it within you, and you know that it is ready to go into the world, to become everyone else’s. Given as a gift. To grow apart from you, a call to be responded and transmutated to, into something new, relational to other perspectives, other worlds, other words, other inner bubbled formations that will reflect anew light.

This is serious. Deadly serious, this struggle to relate yourself to the world. While our nation’s administrative bureaucratic buffoons cut funding from schools, arts, music and add budgetary allocations to weapons technology. While corporations study how to influence our impulses. While lonely, desperate, disconnected youths contemplate suicide and murder.

This task we take upon ourselves, to talk to each other, to explore what we feel, to sit down and write, to meditate, to study ourselves—the fate of the world rests upon our shoulders. The future of humanity resides within this forum of inner contemplation. This is how important it is to find a positive, thoughtful release. Because when it just sits and foments within, it builds into something sinister. It becomes demonic, these unreleased emotions and lonely logics. It becomes so silly, so overblown, so hideously distorted, all stemming simply from the moment when you suppressed your own feelings, your own thoughts, your own words. Because you thought the world would not understand. Because you could not understand. Because you had not yet found a medium of release, of expression. When all along, it resides within you. Around you. Is you. Your hands. Your lips. Your eyes. Your body. You are capable of expressing divinity in every action, every movement, every word penned, every harmonic connection formed between fingers and heart, between body and mind, between outer and inner.

This transgression of barriers, the slipping across of boundaries, these subtle shifts and exchanges of your everyday interactions within the world—this is what determines what is. What can be. What will be. Think about that. Then talk about it.

Love and Despair

How low we can go. These killers, these suicidal fanatical devotees of destruction, these prophets of despair, bitterness, and devastation, they bring home how far we have to go. How far away we can distance ourselves from ourselves. How bestial and bloody and pathetic we have become, stuck inside of our blind armored suits of ignorance. How lonely and desperate, disassociated by untouchable airbrushed images of desirability, broken apart by inability to connect, unable to relate to the lines drawn to direct flows into grids, chaos into consummation. Fragments. Shards destroying innocence. Corrupting all the outer world to communicate your despair.

How hard is it to enact the simplest of connections. To reach across the void into another human heart. To reach across the void into yourself, to voice words from this emptiness, to articulate out the stretch of separation. Maybe because we are afraid of what will be unleashed that has been pent up and waiting. Because the words that are revealed may not be easy, may not be perfect, may not be boxed, defined and put into a frame to hang, to admire. Because to speak this inner detachment is to struggle. It is to expose your vulnerability. It is to hurt. It is to become a human creature, to be imperfect, mortal, and needing to be held. Needing to be loved. Needing to be understood.

A gun is a tunnel into inhumanity. Nothing will ever be healed or resolved or advanced through weaponry. Every new weapon manufactured and sold is another tear in the fabric of our connections to each other. How we are crawling to escape these rifts, how we are running, bolting our doors inside of ourselves, shutting the windows of our minds.

We are scared of strangers. We are scared of our hearts. We are scared of the unofficial information that waits to flood into our minds when the TV or radio is off, when there is only silence, and we are scared, and we are alone, and there are no words that we yet know of to communicate what we see there in that place within us. The lights that flurry behind our eyelids. The knowledge that simply being innocent will not protect you from anything. The knowledge that we must plunge deeper into suffering to root out this evil. We must go there daily. We must go there with every other person in our lives. We must go there and connect these places inside our hearts to each other and build heaven here on earth. Not from superficial pretensions. Not from lies and deceit. Not from weapons and warfare. Only out of the softest, most delicate, fragile parts of our hearts can heaven be formed.

How do the students who were there that day on that Virginian campus feel right now? I think I might have an idea how they feel. They feel like they are black holes in the darkness of the night, that there is nothing to protect them, that there is only despair, and pain, and this dark emptiness inside that cannot ever be breached, that cannot ever again be healed. That they have lost some part of themselves. And they have. We all did.

And we will continue to lose parts of each other until healing is officially sanctioned, not relegated to fringe hippy new-age books. Until we recognize that every action we take has a consequence. That every product we sell creates a stream of waste. That human beings need each other, not holes in which to hide. That what we feel is real. That what we imagine can happen. That despair is everywhere, rampant, dominant, wreaking its havoc on the outer world. But that love is here and ready to be unleashed, and how close, and far, we are

to allowing ourselves to be loved,

completely.

Americans and their right to kill each other

OK, so yet another school massacre has occurred. And what I’m wondering is, what idiot out there still thinks that American citizens should have the right to bear arms?

We allow the NRA to terrorize our country. You would think that the frequency of these occurrences would kind of wake people up to the fact that no one has a right to carry weapons manufactured to kill people. You would think that maybe people would wake up to the fact that the US is the biggest arms trader in the world. You would think that maybe people would wake up to the fact that people ain’t using these guns to kill deer. You would think that maybe the fear, despair, and homegrown terrorism we’ve generated right here on American soil would be enough. Enough to feel sickened enough to do something about it.

More On the Disappearing Bees

So the reason bees are dying . . . there’s the possibility that their flight patterns are being disturbed by increasing cell-phone usage. The radiation is rendering them senseless.

If this theory is true, then you might want to take the cell-phone away from your face. Far, far away. Use an ear-bud with a mile long extension. Cuz if bees are getting fucked up by the radiation then there’s probably a good chance that it’s not the best thing in the world to put up next to your brain.

Restorative Justice and Perspectival Shifts

There’s an interesting article in The Independent on ‘restorative justice’ methods in Britain which deal with bullying in some schools. The restorative justice approach, based on Maori cultural principles, attempts to deal with bullying not through punishment, but through face-to-face facilitated discussion and reconciliation between victim and offender. Having been bullied once upon a time myself in my childhood, simply because I was a quiet and introverted kid, I can well understand the ineffectiveness of attempting to “tattletale” on the bully. All that happens is that you make them more angry, and they will only seek later to make you pay for telling on them and getting them in trouble.

The restorative justice approach sits the bully and their victim down together, and the victim tells the bully what the effects of their bullying have done to their lives. The bully is thus shown quite viscerally what the effect of his/her actions has wrought, and he or she is thus given the full action-and-consequence perspective that they had not thought through before. It teaches them to understand the victim’s perspective. Once this perspective is developed, 9 times out of 10 the bully has lost all desire to continue abusing another human being. Because no longer can they pretend they don’t know what they are doing.

What a unique and deceptively simple approach to justice! Community and communication based as opposed to hierarchical law based. Because law, even when developed with noble ethos and egalitarian interests in mind, is set in stone—well not stone, because it can be amended, but more like thickly stirred sludge—and is little able to adapt to unique particular circumstances and contexts. Our law is a law focused on punishment and retribution, suing and money kickbacks, with little to no compassion and healing.

I just realized from the article that I had already unwittingly been training some of my workers in restorative justice approaches when it came to dealing with matters of poor cleaning jobs done by staff under them. I tell them that instead of yelling at people and making them feel bad, simply take the person into the place where they failed to clean adequately and show them visually what they missed. Once they have an understanding of this, they will not usually make the same mistakes again, unless they really are just asswipes. The fact is that most people simply do not always have the oversight and follow through of thought that takes them to the point of realizing the bigger picture, unless they are specifically shown the bigger picture. Then they get the A-ha moment.

Our culture, I often think, works from the angle of assuming that people are inherently stupid and pretty much worthless except as mindless consumers, spoonfed drivel and guidance from above. But on the contrary, I think that people are innately quite capable of doing highly creative acts of beauty, if given half a chance. It’s this ‘half a chance’ that is oftentimes missing in most situations. The most potent power that we all hold in the world is our perspective, and if most people’s perspectives are delimited and negative, then that has a profound affect on everyone. Even the simple inner act of allowing another human being to exist beyond the box that you daily choose to confine them in can have amazing consequences. All you did was change the way you look, and then the outer world shifted! Is this possible? It is. It happens every day. The little revolutions. The little openings of light shining from within making their way into another’s eyes.

Smoking Mothers = More Women in the World

A study in Liverpool was just released that found that mothers who smoke while pregnant increase their likelihood of bearing girls. Even mothers who are only exposed to secondhand smoke decrease their chances of bearing a boy. Which raises interesting ethical issues here. Obviously, it’s bad for people to smoke cigarettes, especially conceiving mothers. But it’s good for the world, in my personal opinion, for there to be an over abundance of women. So perhaps we should be nudging those pregnant women to have a couple of packs, eh? I wonder if the mother’s drinking alcohol during pregnancy increases the chances of bearing men . . . .

Honey Bees Be Dyin’

Have you heard about the honey bees? That they are dying in vast numbers, and nobody knows why? That’s kind of scary. First and foremost, because I love me my honey. Second, because they pollinate most of our flowers, fruits, and food plants.

There’s endless speculation as to the cause, such as that the bees are getting “stressed out.” Whatever. More like “they’re getting bombed with toxic chemicals.” Let’s face it, the agribusiness in this country essentially grows its plants on steroids and antibiotics. And it’s like we’re surprised when suddenly all the adults start getting cancer, all the children are born with some kind of disorder, whether physical or mental, and all the food tastes like crap unless you add some of that manufactured “natural flavoring.” And we’re in the midst of what is quite soberly termed an “obesity epidemic.” So the human signs are quite readily visible, if you realize what you’re looking at: the cumulative effects of years of growing and serving food based on business instead of health. And so I guess it shouldn’t be all that surprising that now we’re beginning, inevitably, to see the devastating effects on animal, plant, and insect life. And microbial life, such as the growing amounts of “superbugs” that are completely resistant to any form of antibiotic. Forget global warming. I think this complete disassociation of human life from natural cycles is what constitutes the greatest danger to our survival as a species. We collectively have only the dimmest awareness that we are wholly dependent on biodiversity and connectivity with animals, plants, insects, microbes, and the soil.

In order to survive, we have to understand just how connected we are with everything around us.

Rant Against the Good Ol Boys

Don’t you love the way our government’s dirty hands are smeared all over the spectrum—from Enron, to false documentation on WMDs in Iraq, to Valerie Plame’s exposé, to abuses at Abu Ghraib, to the firing of appointed attorneys across the nation, to deliberately misleading the public on global warming, to [fit whatever scandal you can remember here]—and yet, mysteriously, none of the people truly responsible are ever held to account. There’s always a fall guy. This is, of course, the name of the political game. Like how Bush Senior had his hands deep in the Iran-Contra affair as VP under Reagan, and yet only a bunch of underlings took the fall, and then there he was later, serving as President of the United States, happily fucking up the world and the nation.

And all of this stuff is headline news. And yet nothing is done. The White House says it has done nothing wrong and destroys documents and cuts loose some people and that’s that. Just some headlines, maybe some panels, some investigations, even damning evidence, memos and statements released to the public. But the source of all of these unethical dealings is never dealt with. On and on it goes. The spokesman for the White House or the Pentagon, or robotic hearted Cheney himself, just says that the dudes in power had no idea such dastardly goings on were going on. My goodness, they say, what a surprise! I didn’t command them to do that! I had no clue! Let’s burn those evildoers at the stake!

Yet take those denialists at their word, and you still arrive at a rather disturbing conclusion: if the guys supposedly in seats of extreme power, with myriads of diverse daily information at their fingertips, had no idea what was going on within their own administration, within their own minions, within their own corporate moneyed interest ties—then doesn’t that mean that these guys who are supposedly running our country are not fit to run our country? Because they should have known what was going on in all of these situations. That’s their job. That’s what we hired them for.

So in other words, one way or the other—whether you believe all of the quite clear and cumulative evidence that points to the fact that our government is deliberately deceiving and cheating its own people (not to mention all of the rest of the world), or whether you believe that they are indeed pristine and clean of all involvement in the exponentially growing list of scandals—the basic summary of the situation is that we have either A) evil rich arrogant pricks, or B) clueless rich arrogant pricks, running our country. So why, oh please tell me why, my fellow American citizens, are these rich arrogant pricks still in office? Could we not at least get us some intelligent scrupulous rich arrogant pricks at the least?

More Billionaires, Great, Just What This World Needs

Forbes magazine just released its annual list of world billionaires, and the number has jumped from 793 last year to 946. Yippee! “‘In the last five years… despite all the turmoil in the world, all the conflict in the world, the global economy in real terms expanded over 25%,’ said Steve Forbes, the magazine’s editor-in-chief.’ So let me get this straight. The “global economy,” in very “real terms”, has expanded. Despite “all the turmoil.” So a bunch of stinky filthy rich bastards are getting even more super rich. I don’t call that a global economy in any terms: I call that corporate colonization. Because while this list of billionaires is expanding, the list of people living well below poverty is also expanding.

As long as there are people who control music, who control information, who control seeds, who control access to medication, then there’s going to be a select group of very rich people at the detriment of a large mass of very poor people. I don’t understand why anyone still subscribes to this bullshit Reagonomics trickle down theory. The fact is that this supposedly thriving middle class is only connected to their limited wealth by a umbilical cord hooked on a speculative bubble. Once that bubble bursts, the super rich are still chaffeured comfortably along to their social dinners while all the once climbing middle class, complacent and spoonfed drool from above, will suddenly find themselves sunk down with all the rest of the masses of people out there who never could climb out of 9 to 5 minimum wages.

I want to see the list of world billionaires diminish, year by year, until there is no one single human being out there who is ever estimated at a net worth of 56 billion dollars. I want to see all the rest of the world, “all that turmoil,” become rich. I want to see no one living at or below poverty. Is that too much to ask? Cuz I think it seems pretty feasible if all the accumulated riches of the super rich were actually put towards something more productive then some motherfuckers collection of Humvees.

US Clandestine Middle East Activity

Click here to read a long, extremely informative article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker about the Administration’s current shift in overt and covert operations in the Middle East, and what effect these might have on the future. It’s always sobering to recognize that a small but powerful portion of our government is actively engaging in clandestine operations with the end result of a potentially devastating escalation of world violence, and that neither the American people nor our elected representatives are given the chance to be informed nor given the voice to affect these actions. Our government has demonstrated time and time again that it cannot and should never be trusted to make ethical decisions on matters of involvement with foreign nations. Remember Iran-Contra, remember Cambodia, remember Haiti, remember El Salvador, remember any of the countless and innumerable other underworld US government funded covert operations and black money scattering across small nations all over the world resulting in violence, death, destabilization of societies, brutal dictatorships, arms smuggling, drugs trading, extremist sectarianism, and all other forms of chaos and terror? Oh yes. That would be our good old God fearing, freedom loving, pro-capitalist government! Out there working hard to benefit world peace and solve world hunger and eliminate world poverty, oh yes!

And Americans wonder why the US is feared/hated/despised in some parts of the world! Learn some American History.

Hypocrisy & Politics

OK, so all that is in the media about Hillary Clinton’s Presidential bid is that she voted for the Iraq ‘war.’ And she is refusing to apologize for it. Good for her. I would hereby like to remind all the liberal Democrats out there who are getting all righteous and angry about this particular piece of news that they themselves probably were supporting the invasion as well back then. Maybe they didn’t vote for it, but they weren’t blocking weapons factory trucks from making deliveries. They weren’t attempting to stop the shipment of troops over to the Middle East. Most Americans, let me remind you, according to the polls, were quite supportive of the war, due of course to misinformation in the media and ignorance of the situation in general. So now that the tide has turned and suddenly its fasionable to be against the Iraq invasion, and George W. Bush isn’t even really a topic of conversation anymore because he’s passé even while still in office, the media and righteous Democrats jump on Hillary’s back and make it into a huge issue. If the media is going to get so worked up against Hillary about this, why didn’t they get worked up about facts and do a little investigative reporting when the invasion was being proposed? Why don’t they get worked up against the American people, who by and large supported the war and support any and all wars until they start to realize that the casualties aren’t worth it?

I don’t like that Hillary supported the invasion. But the fact is that she is a highly intelligent woman, and she’s got a lot more going for her if people could get past some legislative act from years ago. Try listening to what she is saying NOW rather than harping about shit that you didn’t do anything about at the time.

A New Year to Live, Love, and Grow

As per a sort-of-tradition (check out last year’s missive, or from 2005, or the one from 2002), I feel the need to say a few words to commemorate el día de año nuevo: wherever you might happen to be when reading this and at whatever time, let’s agree to one thing: we are entering a new horizon of existence, and whether or not the calendar system we follow runs according to divine accordance or not, the fact is that every day, every month, every year pushes us farther along the paths to our omega points, the unknown call pulling us into a hopefully transcendent future.

Every New Year’s is not only a celebration, but a remembrance of what has passed to bring us here, and a harkening on what is to come. There are certainly enough problems in the world to give us pause, and cast long shadows onto future generations. But there is hope that humanity will evolve to meet the challenges to our species, and this hope is called love. In the midst of the fragmented shards of war, desperation, and complacency, love is the flower that can break through concrete and connect together alien worlds. To embrace everything that currently exists, and everything that has come before, is the only path to the future. To accept the world, your family, your loved ones, and yourself as what is, in all its imperfection and seeming disconnection.

Beyond the excuse to drink excessively and lose control over your actions, New Year’s stands as a time to look back and look forward, and ask the big questions that your everyday life has numbed your awareness to: what gives your life meaning? Where will you be a year from now? Where were you a year from now? It also stands as a time to give thanks for the gifts from the divine that allowed you to make it thus far, to appreciate the friends that you have, to kiss your beloved, and a time to feel hope that all of which has sustained you thus far will only grow, and grow, and grow.

So I raise my cup of Chartreuse to you and wish you the best–because I acknowledge openly that your future is tied so intimately to mine as to be indistinguishable, on a Kosmic level. And I wish the same to all people everywhere. That we can all find our ways into everyday joy, to a paradise now, to a heaven here.

“Winning the Iraq War” and Other Myths

I think it’s interesting that when political figures–most notably the always loquacious President himself–discuss the Iraq “war,” it is always in terms of “winning.” And the media just runs along with it, as if an occupation of a middle eastern nation–which, just a reminder, never was justified on any grounds–is a situation where something can be “won.” Does anyone ever stop to think about this? What exactly is it that one can win in any war? And if something is won, is it simply resources and strategic power? And does this ever balance out with the lives lost on both sides and the devastation of the land where the battles took place? Did we “win” anything in Vietnam?

It disturbs me that this idea of winning something, anything at all, through militant attacks can be so blithely accepted by the media and general society. Such an outlook basically accepts the very premise of war as a completely logical and acceptable course of action, because if one can “win” something by attacking a foreign nation and killing tons of innocent people along with our own soldiers and devastating that society and destroying its history, well, I sure as hell am confused about it.

So all they talk about–both Republicrats and Democans–is whether or not we are “losing” or “winning” the Iraq “war.” Shit man, how many lives have we lost now? Almost 3,000 American soldiers, and an untrackable and probably horrific number of Iraqi citizens and “dissidents.” And what else have we lost? Respect and credibility from the rest of the world. Now let’s see what we’ve gained: an ever increasing drain on the national budget and a whole new generation of young militant Islamic extremists. I’m searching desperately here for any reason, any at all, to be found that could even remotely justify this occupation of Iraq–but just like when the whole bullshit propaganda campaign leading all the way up to the “shock and awe” bombing in Baghdad was started, there ain’t no good reason at all. It was never a matter of winning or losing. It was a matter of complete idiocy and short-sightedness based on an idealogical Neocon conception of “A New American Century.”

George W. still believes that “we’re going to win” in Iraq. That’s charming that he’s so naive and faithful. I just can’t believe how much this country still just rolls along with it, with no seeming skepticism beyond a gentle prodding at him about the polls. This guy is a moron, and anyone who for a second is hem-hawing about how “history will be the true test” of whether the Iraq invasion was a “success” or not is one as well. We invaded a country, a civilization, a society, and we tore it apart with guns, bombs, and ideologies that have no application in that world, nor in any real world. You want to know what’s going to happen to Iraq? Take a look at Vietnam now. Remember that country? Yeah, it once was a country, and not just a name for a “war,” before we went in there and fucked it up. Take a look at Afghanistan now. Remember that place? We went in there to warm up for Iraq. We were supposed to be making all of these places better, we were freeing them from their antiquated mentalities and governing systems, we were giving them the wonderful joys of Democracy and IMF Bank Loaned Capitalism. Ah, yes, we Americans are indeed honorable and God lovin’ folks, as long as the God lovin’ comes floating down on a green back note. We’re winning all kinds of battles, and all of them completely imaginary. But as long as the media keeps spinning those sweet songs of mindless numbing acceptance, will any of us ever really know the difference?

Malaria Vaccine

Researchers got smart with malaria. They’ve developed a vaccine which destroys malaria in the mosquitoes which are carrying the virus. Obviously, this won’t prevent the person who gets bitten from getting malaria–but it will prevent all subsequent people getting bit from being infected. What’s ingenious about this vaccine is that it reverses the viral process itself. It operates on a community based level of prevention, rather than trying to destroy the virus per individual, which has proved essentially impossible.

This finding may pave the way for more ingenuous, community minded viral prevention.

United Nations needs to be truly United

One great thing about the internet as an informational sea-haven is that when you get sick of the mainstream media’s spin of speeches, you can just do a search and go direct to the source yourself. I did that yesterday with Kofi Annan’s speech to the UN, which has been spun in the US media as being some kind of attack on US values. His speech is wonderful, and I recommend reading it through if you’ve got a minute. Far from being an attack of the US, he rather attempts to remind the American people of their own history, and why the UN exists, as created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. All you hear in the US media these days, as spun by Fox News, is that the UN is an abominable institution, seeking to restrict our freedoms and halt action through beaucratic hem-hawing. The UN sure as hell ain’t perfect. But the idea behind it remains critical to the survival of humanity: that we need a shared global vision and policy, and subsequent enforcement. If the US cannot abide by diplomacy and collective decision-making, then the US must be considered a rogue nation, armed and dangerous to the rest of the world. And the US has only proved this perception by its hasty actions taken in Iraq and Afghanistan. The world is beginning to view the US as a threat rather than a protective power, and that is something we need to deal with. For it was the US itself which originally served to bring together the UN in the first place. It’s sad that it takes other leaders and the UN itself to remind Americans of their own history.

Americans certainly are notorious for having no collective conception of their own history and government. When the Iraq “war” was beginning, with the seemingly united support of all simple-minded Americans, I was asking, “Does nobody remember the Vietnam “war”? The Pentagon Papers?”Anybody? Remember the Iran-Contra affair? Does anybody pay attention to these little tidbits of readily available official documentation and news information that quite blatantly affirms that the American government has no interest in freedom or democracy or human welfare? That it acts solely in interest of power and money?

We need a body like the United Nations, except we need a body like the UN that is actually effective. And for the UN or any other world body to be effective, it will require the support of the American people. War crimes such as Iraq can not be allowed to continue. Rapings and genocide in Darfur can not be allowed to continue. And its quite obvious that no longer can one nation be allowed to do whatever it wants, no matter how many nuclear weapons it may possess.

Muhammad Yunus’ Nobel Peace Lecture

Dr. Muhammad Yunus, accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, gave a stirring speech today detailing how to fight poverty effectively. He has demonstrated, through his work with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, that the poor, if given half a chance, will work to better themselves and their community. Contrast this to most middle to upper-class American’s viewpoint, which will be something to the tune of “poor people are poor because they are lazy, stupid, etc.” As in, poor people deserve to be poor. Dr. Yunus, on the other hand–obviously an enlightened human being, as opposed to most middle to upper-class Americans–states, “Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which under-estimates human capacity . . . Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.” Yes. His words come from the depths of understanding, compassion, and everyday connection with the struggles of poverty.

Dr. Yunus also clarifies some ideas on capitalism which I had been moving towards as my social awareness has been expanding bit by bit. He states that our current conception of capitalism and business “originates from the assumption that entrepreneurs are one-dimensional human beings, who are dedicated to one mission in their business lives — to maximize profit. This interpretation of capitalism insulates the entrepreneurs from all political, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental dimensions of their lives. This was done perhaps as a reasonable simplification, but it stripped away the very essentials of human life.

Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.

Many of the world’s problems exist because of this restriction on the players of free-market. The world has not resolved the problem of crushing poverty that half of its population suffers. Healthcare remains out of the reach on the majority of the world population. The country with the richest and freest market fails to provide healthcare for one-fifth of its population.

We have remained so impressed by the success of the free-market that we never dared to express any doubt abqut our basic assumption. To make it worse, we worked extra hard to transform ourselves, as closely as possible, into the one-dimensional human beings as conceptualized in the theory, to allow smooth functioning of the free market mechanism.“

How simply and pointedly stated. He very clearly explicates the issues surrounding poverty without getting bogged down in political or theoretical constructs. The fact is that our current definition of capitalism and human capability is extremely one-sided, and it’s destroying the entire world. Yunus also brings out a key element of poverty: that “poverty is a threat to peace.” That when people live in squalor with no immediate or visible means of escape, they will turn to terrorism, theft, and rage. That as long as we have those who have and those who have not, then we will have warfare.

Finally, Yunus offers a vision of humanity that is filled with hope. He obviously believes in the power of the human mind to create whatever it desires. He states that “we create what we want: we get what we want, or what we don’t refuse. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us. If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world.” In other words, all it takes is the simple will to make the world a better place to begin making it a better place. Amen.

New Roll-Call In the Government

So the political climate in the US administration has shifted dramatically in these last 2 days. This will have far-reaching consequences, probably much more so than many people would believe. But the one important thing that remains to be seen is whether the change will really have any eventual positive, personal impact on you and me. Because we all know that the Democrats fit just as snugly in the pockets of corporate money as do the Republicans. And simply shifting the control from one partisan political group to another does not change the way the system already runs. It will still be the same game, only run on a different team.

What I am hoping is that in the shifting regime, pressure from the body politic, from normal people and what they need–not corporate lobby groups–will guide the Democratic party into standing closer for what it was supposed to represent all along–the interests of people over that of money.

Open-source Economies?

Something I was thinking about this morning in relation to the world going to shit, etc: the need for a global governing/discussive/economic body. And I was thinking of how that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon–at least, not in terms of politics as we know it. Nations currently are only looking out for number one, and that’s the name of the game in terms of world politics: garnering resources, power, and economic stability.

So I then thought of the only other possibility of correcting a world that’s been thrown to the dogs of money-grubbing and power mongering: the people, the individuals who are all attempting simply to live their lives and love and survive. The internet has proven to be a powerful networking medium, never subject to predictability, subversive but also harnessed just as tightly to consumerism and the market economy. Decentralized networking–a connection directly between individuals, without centralized policing or governing structures–has been proven on the internet to thrive and be effective. Furthermore, the internet has also proven that open-source information empowers individuals to create and innovate far beyond whatever original intention was behind a software or social engineering project.

And I was thinking: this might be the key to our future, to the survival of our species. Not to be overly dramatic, but anyone with any level of awareness beyond their own selfish needs and ideologies recognizes that the problems that we face in the near-future are almost apocalyptic in stature, and will require the utmost in creativity, practicality, and love in order to overcome. It will take money, policy, lifestyle, and consciousness-level changes on a global scale. And I think it is quite readily apparent that we can not rely on our current governing structures to enact these kind of revolutionary and evolutionary changes. It will be much too late by the time politicians and those with over 70% of the globe’s wealth and resources will take their heads out of their oily asses and take a look at what’s beyond themselves. The only ones who can change it are us–the everyday people who put 2 and 2 together. And I’m thinking that the internet may just be the forum in which we can change it.

Beyond MySpace and YouTube and Gnutella other such networks of entertainment and time-passing, it may just be that the internet can provide nodes of not only social and cultural consciousness–but also that somehow money can be utilized and activated across national boundaries. I haven’t envisioned how this could ever happen, because I’m not very technical nor very economical-minded. But I do see a generalized notion here, a possibility, a potentiality.

As in a network may be formed, in which not only ideas, people, and hearts are virtually conjoined, but also in which a new market may be formed–a market in which money goes towards what it is supposed to be going towards: local economies and social programs, rather then to gluttonous super-structures that nickel and dime the shit out of everything so that some fat motherfucker can play golf and perform perverted sexual fantasies with whores and neglect his kids.

How can this happen? I don’t know–but I’m hoping that somebody else will.

Report on Economic Impact of Climate Change

Here’s an interesting report looking at the impact of global climate change from an economic viewpoint. The author, a British economist, calls for preemptive spending of 1% of the world’s GDP now in order to save what will eventually be at least a 20% loss in GDP, given the devastating effects of climate change to come. Makes sense. This is along the lines of something I always bring up when discussing the future and sustainability and such: it actually makes more monetary sense to be sustainable, looking towards the future and the environment. This is why it is ridiculous to listen to idiots who push for short-term profit at the detriment of everything except themselves. Unfortunately, these idiots currently run the country and most corporations. It’s funny to think that in idealized terms, a politician is supposed to be someone who is looking towards the future and making plans and budgets in order to prepare for that future. Yet our politicians look only about as far as their own ass–which might be big–but they ain’t big enough for the shit that’s about to be hitting the global fan.

Cellphones = Selective Birth Control

So a study just came out saying that men who use cellphones more than 4 hours a day could be rendered infertile. Meaning that all those executive men who walk around all day talking corporate blather on their cellphones will not bear children on this earth. That sounds pretty good to me. Keep using ‘em, suits!

Priests and the Power of Corruption

It seems like there is nothing the Catholic Church can do to rectify its public image. There is a constant stream through the media headlines of either some Dan Brownesque conspiracy, or some priest sodomy scandal. The public is thoroughly disillusioned now–not only with God, who’s been passé for some time now (excluding certain landlocked areas of the country)–but with God’s servants, who seem to have a disturbing affinity for young boys.

It gives one pause to think that perhaps those men who enter into priesthood, dedicating themselves for life to spiritual ideals, are not necessarily all godly seekers–that perhaps rather than entering priesthood to find God, they are entering priesthood to escape themselves. They want to escape their desire, their flesh, their past, and be retempered in some conception of purity. But the fact is that they are lonely creatures, and they are still humans, however well-versed in Biblical lore they may be.

To me, it becomes evident that priesthood itself, and its saintly demands, is simply an unrealistic role to assign to most people. These men are placed in positions of trust and power as empty vessels of God–so when their own desires and weaknesses become evident, as of course they inevitably will, given that they are mere mortals, it thus becomes magnified in its effect. The problem, then, is not simply that there are men who become priests that are perverts–it is that the very role of priesthood lends itself to perversity.

This is not to say that there are not priests who are indeed spiritual and godly men. It is rather to acknowledge that any and every priest is a human being, and that all human beings, placed into an idealized role and given power, are subject to corruption. We already know that all too well in regards to politicians. We already know that with policemen (or at least a certain segment of the populace knows it all too well). It applies just as well to priests, and just as well to the Church itself.

Mere outward trappings of justice, truth, or spirituality are not a guarantee of anything.

Mel Gibson and His Golden Eggs

What’s up with all this Mel Gibson crap? Isn’t he just another Hollywood actor? So why does it seem like every turd that drops out of his mouth is headline news? This reveals far more of the state of news and ‘entertainment’ then it does about the state of the world. What it reveals is that once the media discovers that a certain story draws readership or viewers, then they will continue to repeat that type of story ad nauseam until they’ve beaten it to death and numbed everyone to any interest in it whatsoever. Meanwhile, there’s genocide in Sudan, an ever widening gap between those who have and those who have not in the United States and the rest of the world, torturing of innocent people in CIA run prisons, trafficking of weapons, declining standards of public health everywhere, etc, etcetera. So Gibson makes some drunken anti-Semitic remarks. And now suddenly everything the guy says is reportable, because he’s obviously got a penchant for sticking his designer boots in his mouth. He’s “controversial.” What that means is that he’s ripe for being picked apart slowly by the entertainment news until there’s no meat left to him.

For the record, I thought his remarks comparing the Mayan culture and the US were probably the most perceptive thing he’s ever been reported to say.

Teenage Wars

Did you know that there is a repellent for teenagers, used by storekeepers and other such fascists? Yes, the device, called the Mosquito, operates by emitting a high pitched frequency that has been found to be audible only to those roughly 20 and under. Older people can’t hear the sound.

What is the most interesting twist in this story, however, is that teens have figured out a way to utilize this “weapon” to their advantage. They are able to install the frequency as a ringtone on their cellphones, and thus now can receive cellphone calls in class without their teachers hearing the ring.

Now it’s not just class warfare; it’s generational warfare.

Chavez Calls Bush the Devil

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela once again demonstrates his ability to call things as they are, at the expense of political politeness. He called Bush “the devil” before a United Nations assembly, asked its members to read a Noam Chomsky book, and said that the United State’s current political system “doesn’t work” and is “anti-democratic.” He also said that the United Nations as it is no longer works and needs to be recreated. It’s always nice to see someone who is willing to be honest and forthright about political affairs before the world.

One can only imagine how such honesty will be treated by Fox News and other such fronts for the Christian Coalition. It is time, however, that mainstream Americans became aware of how much of the wider world views our eloquent president. To many people in other countries, Bush is indeed a devil (and this unfortunately often translates into all Americans being devils as well). To many of his own constituents he is a devil. And beyond Bush, it is obviously becoming apparent to the wider world that the United States as a representative of democracy is a big fat lie.

Chavez has balls. But pretty soon other less extreme politicians from other countries will begin also vocalizing their loathing of the United State’s squish em and suck em dry policies. Forces in the world are shifting.

Political Visions

I have seen the light. Estadounidenses need more vacations. I am currently on vacation in sunny southern California, and I feel like a bear has climbed down from off my back. (Back in the days when I used to run track, we would say that someone had “the bear on their back” when you could see them struggling around the last corner of the homestretch and slowing down.) I needed a break from the daily grind, a break from the habits and normality of my sort-of settled cabin mountain life. No wonder most Americans are so close-minded and one-dimensional. We are so occupied with work and then subsequent TV and habitual existence that it is nearly impossible for us to envisage situations outside of our immediate and limited scopes. We need vacations to see the other side of things now and then, to break from the same-old and remember who we are outside of the people and circumstances that surround us everyday. It is so easy to get stuck in the mire of other people’s perceptions and gossip.

That said, I wanted to talk a little bit about some political stuff. What started the train of thought was reading an excellent article on the atrocities in Darfur, describing the rogue janjaweeds employed by the Sudanese government to perform “ethnic cleansing” (do we really have to use the word ‘cleansing’? Couldn’t we just call it what it is–mass murder?). The United States has actually been fairly active in providing aid and attempting to garner international action, which unfortunately has proved ineffective due to the loss of respect by the rest of the world for our dishonorable actions in Iraq and our hostile behavior to the UN, and Europe in general. Although of course our actions have still not been enough to save lives, but at the very least we have been more active than in the case of Rwanda, in which we did absolutely zilch.

Anyway, to get to the crux of my discussion: I used to consider myself an anarchist, more for lack of attachment to any political ideology or group than actual adherence to anarchic values. (By the way, if you think anarchy is about molotov cocktails and chaos, then you need to read some Emma Goldman or other real anarchic literature. It’s some of the most intelligent and humanist political writing in the world.) I distrusted the US government for the secret and public crimes it committed and continues to commit against its own constituents and against the world. I distrusted the idea of government en total, for large systems of beauracracy and money seem to lead only to corruption and atrocity.

The book that began leading me to a more balanced and integrated view of centralized governing systems actually was on public health (Betrayal of Trust by Laurie Garrett), in which the reporter meticulously disects the causes and effects of the current despicable state of public health in the US and the World Health Organization. I suddenly realized, through this book, that centralized governing systems are essential for the preservance of human life–we need a centralized public health system, we need clean water, clean air, safe homes. The problem is not the idea of government itself–the problem is that most governments, as they are, fail to perform their basic function and purpose–which is serving and protecting their people.

I never fail to be amazed that the Republican party can make “national security” one of its cornerstone issues, when their xenophobic cowboy war games have jeapordized our nation for years to come, and their slashing of social supportive programs and funding have devastated the heart of their own people.

But let me not go off on a rant lambasting Republicans or conservatives, because that isn’t my target right now. They are too easy to bag on, actually. I could go off just as easily on Democrats, for that matter. Politicans, in general, are easy to pigeonhole, because they almost universally only have one thing on their mind–election time. Which leads me to my main topic. Our political and cultural and economic system is seriously screwed up and needs some jerryriggin’.

I’m not against capitalism, per se. But our current form of capitalism (capitalism in the sense of profit as the goal of the economy) ain’t working. It CAN work. See, the problem is that currently our politics and economy is ruled by short term profit and very large corporations. And these corporations are cut-throat, greedy, and extremely short sighted. They can barely look past one season, let alone one year, in terms of their profit margin. But if they took their head out of their asses, and looked a little closer at the bigger picture, at the wide horizon of the future–then they would notice that in the long run, their current actions in pursuance of solely short term profits are unsustainable. Let me rephrase that in terms of money: they will not continue to make money if they continue to function the way most of them currently do. They’ve got to restructure and re-envision themselves and their functions in society and the economy. If they want long term, steady profit, than they will have to become sustainable operations–sustainable in the sense of taking responsibility for their effects on their society and environment, and making subsequent amendments and changes.

Another way to put that last paragraph is that based on our current economic, political, and cultural trajectory, we are destroying the future of our children and grandchildren. Our current way of life is unsustainable. Plain and simple. So if we want to make changes, REAL changes, then we must look ahead, even as far as 30-50 years down the road, to a time when we will no longer be able to be reliant on hydrocarbons as a source of energy.

As to how all of this got started by an article on Darfur: we live in a time in which the globe is quite obviously deeply interconnected, sometimes forcibly so, by commerce, politics, and lifestyle choices. One earth, all that kind of thing. And it is becoming more and more apparent that we need a world governing body that is effective and able to stabilize volatile situations. The UN was a good attempt, but it’s quite obviously not very effective, especially when it’s so easily dominated by the politics and weaponry of a rogue superpower like the US. We need an effective world public health system, again, something able to distance itself from politics and commerce, which the WHO has unfortunately been unable to do. The time of the United States pretending to play policeman and peacemaker to the rest of the world is long gone. There has to be an international force and body, composed of people unattached to partisan interests, which has the capability both of being an effective peacekeeping force, as well as a strong policing force. Because in situations like Darfur, that is what is needed.

More on this topic will probably be forthcoming: any input would be useful.

Healing and Understanding, Not Morbid Wallowing in 9/11

It being 9/11, I wanted to take this moment to raise awareness of all the ways that propaganda from politicians and big media will be deploying the memory of the act of terrorism in the twin towers from 5 years ago. They will get sappy and then subtley morbid, replaying footage from the day of tragedy; they will attempt to harness the feelings of anger and righteousness and direct them outward towards whomever is the current target of warfare, which at the moment seems to be anyone who is dark-skinned and wearing a turban. They will make you feel like you are unpatriotic if you react in any way but blind, unfocused anger or fear.

Resist the urge to “remember the tragedy,” as comemmorative news programs will ask. Replaying tragedies so that you can embed yourself further in anger and fear is sick. It would be ridiculous to suggest that you would ever forget. Who the fuck could forget September 11th? If you are going to “remember” anything, simply honor the memory of the innocent people whose blood was shed for ideology, and remember the lesson that we should have learned from that: fundamentalism of any kind leads to murder.

What should be remembered is that we are currently in a state of everpresent warfare; young Americans are right now dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. And them dying in these foreign lands has not much at all to do with 9/11, and much more to do with the power agendas of the ruling conservative forces in our country. Go read the utter nonsense Cheney is still grinding out through his teeth. He is now saying that if you so much as whisper the fact that the war we are involved in is bullshit, then you are fulfilling the goal of the terrorists. That’s an interesting reversal of truths. The war we are involved in WAS the goal of the terrorists, and every day that we occupy Iraq we are increasing extremist fundamentalism in the middle east.

Let’s say that we considered the act of schoolchildren taking guns into their schools and gunning down their fellow classmates an act of terrorism (which it is, of course). So does that mean that because this has happened in our schools, that we should bomb schoolchildren, then occupy the schools with an army? Do you think that would help us to counter acts of schoolchildren killing each other? It doesn’t make much sense, does it? What would be a more intelligent way of dealing with such a problem?

Think about it. And get over your fear and anger. Healing does not come from getting sappy and righteous about tragedies that have been done to you. Healing comes from attempting to understand “why?” And then moving on.

Dark Matters

Dark matter has been basically proven to exist; click here for a clear and detailed exposition of the evidence.

Cosmology and quantum cosmology have always been fascinating to me, even though I am decidedly of an un-scientific mind and have no interest in equations, proofs, and Klingon speak. What fascinates me about quantum physics applied to cosmology is that it is on such a theoretical edge that it often sounds like science fiction. It speaks of such things as black holes, parallel universes, and dark matter and energy.

I always like to consider the latest findings of quantum cosmology in a philosophical sense. What does this dark matter imply, for instance, in our daily lives? To think that there are forces, gravitational and otherwise, which are invisible and can barely be detected, yet which determine the direction and outcome of all events . . . That in fact these forces constitute the majority of pull and energy in our universe, even though we aren’t aware of them. We sense, sometimes, that there is some underlying power in the trajectory of our lives. That there are connections and fields and magnetic currents far beyond our understanding. This dark matter seems, perhaps, not so outlandish after all. The visible world, the way things appear, we all know on some level is only the tip of the iceberg. What invisible currents flow beneath all, and where does it take us?

World Cup Finale

Well, the World Cup finally be done, and I’ve got the last 12 matches on tape, to be watched and savored throughout the rest of the summer, since I haven’t even seen most of them yet. I won’t lie, I was rooting for France to win the Cup, and I thought they played better than Italy did, but so it goes. Zidane’s headbutt debacle lent a sour note to the proceedings, and that may have been the clincher that lost France the Cup, given that Zidane would undoubtably have made his PK, had he made it thus far. Headbutting an opponent like that is obviously unacceptable on any level–but I am curious as to why he did it, because a player like Zidane, in a Final game (both World Cup final and final game for retirement) would know better, on a conscious level, than to jeapordize his team and his legend by losing his cool. But the Italian player must have really said something to get his goat, because he didn’t even pause to think–he just turned on a dime and laid the Italian down in a moment of extreme anger. I mean, that was a pretty devastating headbutt, he leveled Materazzi like he was a soccer ball on goal. So obviously Materazzi said something to him that was completely unacceptable to Zidane, so unacceptable that he didn’t even bother pushing or shoving–he just straight out clocked the motherfucker. It was a disappointing loss of poise in Zidane at a such a critical juncture in the game and his career, but I imagine that there was a reason for it, and I would like to know what it was. Everyone was surprised at the brutality and lack of hesitation of the action–I was surprised and kind of impressed. No fucking around there. I need to learn how to headbutt like that.

Spam Rant

Spammers are kind of amazing. I don’t imagine that there is really any kind of real money involved in such advertisement–firstly, because it’s always some stupid crap no one would want anyway–and then secondly, because they are fucking annoying, and who in their right minds would ever sponsor someone who invades and persecutes innocent people’s private space? But they are, as I said, kind of amazing; their ingenuity and perseverence in invading every single inch of cyberspace that any human being could ever come across is frankly overwhelming. Their latest thing is posting bullshit comments on my blog. The format is all the same: it says something like “Great!” or “Wonderful blog!” followed by a website address. They have some kind of engine that crawls through blogs and posts such retarded spam all across the WordPress realm.

I’m wondering if there are any anti-spam crusaders out there, righteous hackers who through sleuth and innovation do a reverse spamming program against those businesses or people which are producing the spam. I really hope there are. Cuz spam pisses me off. It’s a product of laziness and greed. The people who produce and send that shit are the kind of people who try to do those “make money at home! 600 dollars a week and all you have to do is send out mail!” pyramid schemes and think that they work. Let’s say that they actually make some kind of income from spamming, enough to support a couple of bags of nachos for their lazy fat-ass sit around all day lifestyle. Yet even with a minimal income coming from such endeavors, the fact is that they are persecuting, yes persecuting, innocent people. The whole production is about waste. Spam is a waste of time, a waste of energy, a waste of resources, all along the line. I think spammers should be captured and tortured, or at least given a good talking to. Yes, I really do. Just like I think the Enron scandal people should have been shot or hung in a public square. The Republican party and the Christian coalition are always talking about having morality, family values, and other such bullshit. Well, it’s about time they put their money where they mouth is. Lock up Rush Limbaugh for using prescription medication illegally. Cut off the hands of George Bush for stealing the lives, money, and faith of the American people. Send Tom Delay to Guantanamo Bay. Draw and quarter Duke Cunningham on national television. Let’s educate our children on ethics!

Anyway, I remember seeing some article a while back on how even though spam is increasing, people are used to it now and it doesn’t really bother them, because it’s a fact of life. I think that’s sad. Why should having to filter through your personal email address EVERY SINGLE DAY and pick out the masses of viagra, sex enhancement, mortgage loans, etcetra ad nauseum advertisements be a fact of life? It’s annoying, it takes time and bandwidth space, and it raises my blood pressure. I don’t think spam is a right of businesses to invade my personal space nor a fact of life.

Here’s to Ghana

The US vs Italy match was painful to watch–a lot of fouls, a lot of intensity, a lot of scary attacks on goal by the Italians, especially the last 20 minutes, where the US was obviously tired and they were playing 9 men against Italy’s 10. It was heartening to see the US team actually struggling this time and battling without looking scared and nervous like the first game–but let’s be honest here: we didn’t even score that one goal we got against Italy (although Beasley’s withdrawn goal was certainly a legit strike). It was an ugly battle, I felt drained afterwards–all the red cards and whistle blows. I was happy we played the way we did–and we still have a chance to advance. Ain’t nothing wrong with a draw game. But still–I don’t feel like the US team has yet shown much soul behind their playing–they don’t play like they really want it. They play like they’re hoping it will fall into their lap.

Ghana, on the other hand, is a breath of fresh life into Group E. Their upset over the Czech Republic wasn’t luck–they dominated that game, they looked hungrier and more spirited–they played the way I wish the US team could play. They play with heart. Whatever the commentators might have said, in the Italy vs Ghana match, I thought Ghana played amazing, especially considering it was their first World Cup game. Again, they played with fire and energy–unfortunately, they just couldn’t connect their goals, and Italy could. But they certainly gave Italy a match, and they learned from that match and came over the Czech Republic with the same passion.

This may sound unpatriotic–not that I care–but I think there might be a part of me rooting for the Ghana team when they play against the US on Thursday. They’re playing like they want it, they’re playing like a team. The US–I think we could play like a team. But I don’t think it helps when our coach calls out players to the media. Yeah, our players played horribly against Czech. But that doesn’t mean the coach needs to name them out on television. That’s real encouraging and positive for the team. Honestly, I think the guy is a douche bag.

Anyway, cheers to Ghana for their spirit thus far, and here’s to hoping they can draw out the US team to play the same.

Updating

I know, I know, I’ve been pretty flakey on posting these days; between Harry Potter (halfway through the 6th book now), the World Cup, a new love in my life, and transitioning between spring and summer seasons at my workplace, I’ve had little free time to do anything, let alone sleep. Once summer gets in full swing here, I’ll be able to settle down a little bit and begin self and world exploration through words once again. Please keep coming and visiting. And watch the World Cup and force other Americans to watch it as well. It disappoints me how few Americans I’ve met who are willing to put aside their personal lives and free time for an event as critical as the World Cup. C’mon people! This shit only comes around every 4 years! It’s better than Quidditch!

Matches

The US just played a horrible World Cup game against the Czechs, it was hard to watch, and left me feeling pretty down. Bad games do this to you. You feel like you’ve been drained of positivity, like when a Dementor passes by. I know the Czech Republic has a damn good team, rated second best in the world, but the US definitely caved under on this game. We had chances, we had a lot of good openings for the goal, but we gave the ball away almost every time.

I’m not really rooting for any team specifically, although I would have liked to see the US team play well. What I watch sports for is to see a good game, no matter who wins. I want to see teams rising to the challenge and making each other play their best.

What I like about soccer is that it isn’t just a game. When the crowds are roaring in that stadium, they are calling out for everything else in their lives: their pride, their hopes, their fears. They are calling out for nation, for identity, for spirit. Politics is involved somewhere, you can feel the whole weight of a country’s past and tradition playing through the ball. It’s a battle, a struggle for transcendence, the players like demi-gods on the field, myth and legend crafted in realtime.

Here’s to hoping Ghana will give Italy a run for their money at noon.

Gay Marriage or Manipulative Politics and Media, Take Your Pick

Let’s all recognize what this sudden focus on gay marriage from the Bush administration and the Republican party (sponsered and broadcast by big media conglomerates, of course) is all about: 1) first and foremost, a distraction from all of the scandals and fuck-ups that Bush and his administration are sinking into the mire of at the moment (I was discussing one scandal the other day with a friend and we realized that there were so many scandals at the moment that we had to figure out which one, exactly, we were talking about); 2) a political “wedge” issue that the Republicans are using to try to gather up the vestiges of bigoted conservative support (as in, oh, those Democrats support gay marriage! We may have fucked up the economy and accepted bribes and have plunged the country into a hopeless occupation of foreign land and cut the budget for all programs that would have any social benefit–but THEY SUPPORT GAYS!).

Whether gay people should be married or not is quite irrelevant in the face of an ever increasing deficit, when 1 out of 8 Americans live in poverty, when most Americans can no longer afford health insurance, when quality jobs are decreasing, when we are involved in the ever sinking quagmire of Iraq, etc, etc, etc etc. As in, there’s fucking plenty of shit to worry about other than what our ethical evaluations of homosexual lifestyles happens to be. I’m sick of hearing about stupid shit like that when election time starts rolling about. It’s gays, or it’s prayer in schools, or it’s abortion, or it’s some bullshit that gets spat about in the media as if they are suddenly issues of national security.

And people wonder why we don’t even bother to vote.

Futbol Diatribe

What with the World Cup approaching and all, I think it’s time I expressed my views re: futbol. Futbol, soccer, is the only sport which I get excited about watching on TV. Well, it’s also the ONLY sport which I will bother to watch, truth be told.

Why aren’t more people in the United States into soccer? I have a theory on this: Americans love their baseball. They love their basketball. They love their football. What’s the similarity between these three sports? Answer: they all have commercial breaks perfectly suited to prime time television. Now think of soccer. The only break they have is when there’s an injury or when it’s half-time. How in the world could something be on TV during prime time in the United States of America if there ain’t no time for brain-washing? Think about it.

Baseball’s a bunch of out-of-shape guys who chew tobacco and stand around and then every once in a while run for a minute. Football is a bunch of guys who lift too many weights and slap each other’s ass just a little too frequently. They line up and then hit each other and then the play stops for a while until they line up again. Basketball is a bunch of guys who are abnormally tall who run back and forth and make baskets one after the other, or foul each other way too often and then make baskets. Stop, go, stop. Stop, go, stop. This is American sports. It’s like being stuck in traffic and billboards and radio are the only entertainment. People actually look forward to major sporting events like the Superbowl in order to watch the latest and hippest COMMERCIALS. Yes. Quite the excitement, eh.

Well, let’s talk soccer, and why this sport is superior to most other sports. First of all, it ain’t Stop-Go-Stop. It’s GO, all the way through to the end. The athletes have to be in the best all-around shape of almost any sport. They’ve got to have endurance, speed, precision, aggression, agility–they’ve got to run back and forth constantly, be ready to stop or charge on a dime, and they’ve got to be continuously adapting their patterns and strategy as a team in order to pass well and make it to the goal. These guys are all amazing athletes. You won’t see no fat asses in soccer.

One of the complaints you might hear lodged against soccer is that it is a painfully low scoring game, sometimes even with no goals made at all. People who complain about such a thing are completely missing the whole point of the game. It’s like watching boxing only for the knock-outs, or Nascar only for the crashes. The fun in soccer is the struggle, the effort to attempt to even get close to the goal box, let alone to score. Scoring is not an easy task, like in basketball. It’s tough to get the ball close to the goal, and it’s tough to get it past the goal keeper, and the struggle of watching the defense vying with the opposing teams’ offense is the suspense and intensity of the game. When the ball comes even remotely close to being in a position to score, all of the crowd is tensed and on their feet. And when they DO score–what ecstasy, what wonder! It takes so much skill of placement and passing and artistry to maneuver that damn ball into that net.

So. I hope that everyone out there is going to watch the World Cup this summer, because guess what? All the rest of the world will be watching, even if most Americans don’t.

Thoughts on Harry Potter

Due to several friends’ insisting, I’ve been reading the Harry Potter books, which I had ceased to continue reading a few years ago when I was working in a high school. Man, these books are like crack, they’re fucking addictive. I’ve been sitting down for several hours at a time, finishing the books in a couple of sittings. At first, I was looking for a reason to dislike the books, due to their overwhelming popularity. And the fact is, they aren’t exactly great literature, and the imaginative world that Rowlings creates is nothing special compared to Tolkien or CS Lewis, or the Dark Is Rising series of childrens books. But they are undeniably compelling, and I’m trying to put my finger on what it is, exactly, that makes them so immersive.

Part of it seems to be that Rowlings has an ability to grow along with her characters, and avoids ever settling into too much habitual stereotyping. The books do, indeed, grow increasingly complex and more adult as they progress, and Rowlings inserts subtle jabs at the media and government and society at large.

Sometimes I think part of the genius and efficacy of these works is not that Rowlings is creating anything entirely new, per se. The magical universe that she draws upon has been fairly established already (giants, wizards, witches, goblins), she simply embellishes it with wonderful quirks and details. The magic that Rowlings possesses is in her ability to put everything old and new together into a comfortable and imaginative mix, to combine various elements into a fast paced narrative with plenty of plot twists to keep it surprising and engaging. At some level, the Harry Potter series is a bit like those children/teenage social books (Sweet Valley High, The Hardy Boys) that function as literary soap operas. Harry Potter, after all, is a post-post-modern creation, able to draw upon pop culture just as well as it draws upon myth and magical lore. Harry Potter is the star of the series, humble and fairly well-balanced, and we always want to see him and his Gryffindor house triumph. But by the end of the 4th book, we do get a feeling, perhaps, that Harry Potter has been too lucky and victorious in all things for his own good. Rowlings senses this, too, and in the 5th book Harry is allowed to give vent to his darker, hormone infused angst and baser aspects of character. It is this sensitive character development that sets Harry Potter series apart from most other series of anything, in that usually the first couple of books are the only ones worth reading, and the last ones are desperate affairs sucking all of their energy from the inventiveness of what came before. Harry Potter books, on the other hand, grow as they are written, they develop along with their characters and the depth of the universe they are creating. In other words, they keep getting better.

Also what seems to set them apart is their establishment in a contemporary world that feels relevant to our world now. Many fantasy books such as Lord of the Rings and The Narnia books seem to have a tendency for pure-blood and noble birth idolatry, making all of the enemies into “dark” creatures and the good characters into light haired, blue eyed people. There is none of this subconscious racism in Rowlings–in fact, she deliberately infuses her stories with side universes of slaving house elves, “pure” and “mixed blood” taunting by other students at Hogwarts, and tidbits about goblin rebellions and bigotry against werewolves and giants by the wizarding community. She never preaches about such things–simply presents them as facets of the wizarding universe, and it is an embellishment which serves to make it more real, more relatable to our own universe. And yes, she throws ethnic diversity into Hogwarts as well. But it is never in a way that feels as forced as the PCness of a Star Trek Next Generation episode, for example. It feels, well, the way it did going to college or high school. We live in increasingly ethnically diverse communities these days. We think it’s perfectly normal for a character to be named Padma or Cho, just as normal as it is to be named Ron or Percy. Rowlings ability to interject these characters and issues into her novels without making anything of it is part of the beauty of the Harry Potter series. All of the flourishes and embellishments of the imagined universe never get in the way of the story and the characters–they enhance it.

Corps of Engineers Honorably Takes Blame

The US Army Corps of Engineers came out clean and admitted that they had failed to adequately and consistently protect the city of New Orleans with their levees. This is quite honorable of them. However, more interesting in this article is that an independent study put out by UC Berkeley “found that New Orleans flood protection was routinely underfunded.” So the US Army Corps of Engineers may have failed to build and repair their levees adequately, but that wasn’t exactly their fault if they lacked the federal funds to do so. So guess what department is to blame, thus and therefore? This is what I was saying back when it happened.

Thoughts on Mt Everest

Mt Everest has been in the news a bit recently, one story detailing the callous disregard of a dying climbers life, who was passed by perhaps 40 other climbers as he sat in the “death zone” region and died, another story telling of the miraculous discovery and rescue of a climber presumed dead who weathered a night on the mountainside and was discovered alive the next morning. Mt Everest demonstrates quite clearly what happens when something extremely dangerous and unpredictable becomes commodified. People pay thousands of dollars to reach the summit of the world’s highest peak with the aid of mountaineering guide companies (much of the money, of course, going to the Nepalese government, who has no interest in attempting to diminish the increasing overcrowdedness of expeditions every year).

Which brings up an interesting ethical question: if you had paid 10,000 dollars in order to summit the highest peak in the world, and you were perfectly aware–just as anyone who will take up the trek is–that you are extremely vulnerable to lack of oxygen, frostbite, unpredictable weather, etc, and that you are putting your life at risk–if you were summiting, and you passed by a man or woman sitting on a rock, obviously in need of oxygen and assistance, would you help them, even though it would mean giving up the chance to summit and say that you had stood at the top of the world?

Bear in mind that you would not be thinking clearly at all, being as that you would not be receiving enough oxygen to your brain. Bear in mind that you had paid 10,000 bones for this, for the claim of having climbed Mt Everest. If you don’t summit, you can’t make that claim. Bear in mind that the man or woman sitting on the rock is with a guided expedition, who supposedly should be keeping tabs on their own team members.

What would you do?

Do you care for a random stranger, or do you fulfill your ambition?

Life Imitates Art

Yes, so scientists have drawn up a theoretical blueprint for an invisibility cloak, such as Harry Potter uses frequently on his escapades at Hogwarts. Using metamaterials, the cloak will bend electromagnetic waves around the subject and channel them to the other side such that it will appear as though nothing is there. “The cloak would act like you’ve opened up a hole in space,” says David Smith. Fascinating.

The Official English Language

The senate just passed a law decreeing English as the “official” language of the United States of America. Yes, a country founded by immigrants, developed on the backs of more immigrants, and continuing to thrive off the work and cultural input of immigrants (whether legal or not) is designating it’s “national” language as English. Such an act strikes me mainly as a form of xenophobia. What is so wrong about fostering other languages within the United States, a country formed on many different peoples and cultures? Why are people so scared to learn other languages? People say that if immigrants are going to come here, than they should learn “our” language. Why? What is “our” language? Colonialists took this land from Indians and Mexicans. The English language is currently dominating the global language landscape, and the biodiversity of languages is being depleted. One researcher has forecasted that roughly half of the world’s languages will be extinct by the close of the 21st century.

I would rather have my child learning to be bi-lingual or tri-lingual in school than simply learning one language and one perception and one history and one bullshit.

Happy Mother’s Day

Ah, yes, Mother’s Day. A day specifically demarcated by . . .whom? What organization generates such “days”? Is it some department of the Federal Government? A bench of regal gowned septuagenarians voting yay or nay for days demanded by rich and frenzied lobbyists?

Well, I was curious, so I just looked it up (god bless the internet). Holidays are “proclaimed” by the President or by an act of Congress (I really like saying “an act of Congress.” Go ahead, try saying it out loud. It sounds good). Now, I understand that it is a good and just thing to celebrate Mothers and the fact that they birthed us. Go Mothers. Maybe we should also have a Birthing Doctors Day, and subsequently a Midwives Day. And an Assisting Nurse for Birthing Day. A day, furthermore, to honor that Disgruntled Taxi Driver Who Drives Birthing Mothers To The Hospital. Fuck it. Let’s go out on a limb here. Let’s go ahead and have a Peoples Day, wherein we celebrate all peoples everywhere. We can buy cards and give them unto ourselves in recognition of our wonderful humanity, Hallmark constructed sentiments that say “Thank you for existing,” or something of the sort with roses or cute cartoons or pictures of naked old people on them.

Such “Days” give one a quiet unsettling of guilt that drives one to purchase things in order to fulfill one’s “duty.” Because if you miss telling your mom Happy Mother’s Day, than you are a horrible child indeed. This an obligation we are discussing here. It is a federally mandated task, this honoring of the mothers. Forget about all the rest of the year. You can treat your mother like shit. But this one day, you’d best buy her some See’s Candies, motherfucker.

Cross Being Taken Down In My Hood

A federal judge ordered the removal of the Mt. Soledad cross, which is right up the street from where I grew up in sunny San Diego. It’s been a controversial issue for the past 20 years or so, because other similar crosses were taken down from other hillsides due to the imposition of religion on sensitive atheists. I’m not really sure whether I care too much one way or the other, although I suppose I could understand if it might be offensive to some people to have a large white cross looming over their homes. A lot of people feel some kind of attachment to the cross simply because it’s been there so long. A lot of Christian people are horrified, of course, because they are horrified by everything, especially the forceful removal of their religious icons (isn’t idolatry a sin?). Personally, I think they should replace it with a large statue of a full-figured nude woman, a curvaceous alabaster fertility goddess. I think that would be pretty cool to look up from the flat beach of La Jolla Shores and see gigantic pendulous breasts casting a shadow from the mountain above. I think it would help keep people more focused on the things that really matter in life. A cross signifies an instrument of painful, barbaric, torturous death applied to criminals during the Roman times, for Christ’s sake! Do we really need to be reminded of how cruel humanity is when we can just flip on the news or drive down the street for such reminders?

Why don’t they just plant a banyan tree there?

Really, all that the Mt. Soledad cross occupies in most young people’s minds such as mine is as a nice spot, with a view, to go park your car late at night and make out in the back seat. Most of us young folk could care less whether there’s a cross there or a statue of Bacchus.

California filing lawsuit against Bush

Go California. Our attorney general is filing a lawsuit against the White House for it’s bullshit auto industry ass-kissing fuel standards. Could it be that the American people are slowly waking up to the fact that they and their children are getting fucked over by their government?

Permaculture

I have just acquired a book which may change my life, and I strongly recommend checking it out for yourself if you have any interest in the following:

* realizing practical and attainable changes that you as an individual can enact to better the world and stop it from completely going to shit as it’s current trajectory forecasts.

* becoming as self-sustainable as possible.

For those of you who are proselytizers of Ken Wilbur’s Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, I would suggest this book as the logical follow-up. It contains enlightened philosophy, but more importantly, it demonstrates and depicts real-life solutions and practical applications of such philosophy. As important as Wilbur’s understanding and explications of spirituality and vision-logic may be, I am much more excited about the concepts related to Permaculture. The shamans understood intricately plants and the power and medicine contained therein. I am rather excited by Permaculture: A Designer’s Manuel because it seems to combine everything that I have been thinking about in relation to my own life and what I can do to change it. As I read through it I will probably post more thoughts on this topic.

Why do Americans want to kill themselves and each other?

Well, so apparently this phenomenon of young men taking guns or cars or some form of weaponry and going on a rampage, intentionally slaughtering as many people as they can for no [immediately apparent] reason and then killing themselves, is not simply some anomaly–it seems to be an almost habitual occurrence, a gruesome symptom of post-modern existence. I base this conclusion on my checking of the headlines now and then, and although I am not going to compile a list of these events, it seems like it happens pretty damn often to me. Often enough so that it should be something that should be worrying us more than Al-Qaeda does. Why do these young men feel the need to destroy others before destroying themselves? It is a sickening display of monstrous intention. These acts are generally premeditated, and their targets are innocent, everyday people, only connected to the murderer by proximity.

The media and horrified parents immediately point their fingers at easy targets such as video games, music, and movies. And while it is possible that the seed of the idea of running rampant with ammo and slaughtering random people could be gleaned from such glamorized violence as depicted in popular forms of media, it is certainly a big step to make from shooting people in a video game to actually gathering arms and ammo and loading them and walking out and shooting real people. It is a step into a complex disturbance much deeper and darker than most people would care to even acknowledge exists anywhere. But, obviously, it exists. And it is affecting minds that seemingly are totally fine, they are totally “normal,” maybe a little quiet or weird. . .and then, suddenly, something happened. What happened?

Anything that could be said about what goes on in the minds of such people is all pure speculation, of course, unless I went out and interviewed a bunch of them, which would be hard given that a lot of them kill themselves in the process. So I won’t try to fathom what might have broken the camel’s back in their minds. But I do think it would be helpful to speculate on why fairly average people would want to kill each other and themselves for no apparent reason.

One thing that always frustrates me with the media and with the way people approach crimes and the criminals who commit them is that rather than trying to understand what might motivate such a crime, the criminals are written off as monsters and their heinous acts are written off as unintelligible acts of primal bestiality. But unfortunately, most people in this world, being intelligent creatures, do the things they do for some kind of reason, whether consciously intentional or not.

To me, when someone commits the crime of killing innocents in a horrific, and also extremely public, manner, it is an extreme call for help. It is a call for help so late in the game that nothing can be done except shoot them or watch them shoot themselves. And that’s just what is so horrible about it to me. These people are not monsters. They have intentionally made themselves appear as monsters in their last act of trying to connect to the outside world, and this must be because they really believe that’s what they are. But they probably know, somewhere within, that they are not such monsters, and so they feel the need to convince the world of such. That is what is horrible to me. Because there is no turning back at that point. That is a sign of such complete and utter hopeless despair.
And so I try to think about what could have made someone think that they are that horrible. Who could really think they were so horrible that they had to show all the world how horrible they were by killing other people? What would lead to such a feeling of oneself? And I think there must be some kind of feeling of impotence, obviously of rage. It has built up so much it explodes. Their only attempt to make themselves known, to be heard, to be powerful, is to kill. That is extreme and terrible and sad. And what that means to me is that something is terribly wrong with our society right now.

Crimes such as these are symptoms of something much deeper that is eating away at the core of our society. People will always kill each other, such is the sadness of humanity. But for people to kill each other in such a manner as this, that is not normal nor does it have a precedent in history as far as I know, although I don’t claim to know such histories. It seems to me to be a symptom of our society as it is right now. And something is wrong, terribly wrong. Why should people feel so outside, so monstrous, that they commit deliberately monstrous acts? When people kills themselves and other people for religious fanaticism, or under the banner of patriotism, or some such thing, at least their acts are intelligible, even if just as horrific. But why would someone just kill, just . . .to kill? And what kind of society would breed the environment of such killers?

Now this is a true-blood American

Here’s a heart-warming real American tale that I just came acrost on Google News, a tale of good vs. evil, a tale of an American Patriot defending his land and wielding his God-given right to bear arms, a tale of a courageous gardener vs. a young terrorist teenaged whippersnapper who dared to cross his lawn! Here’s some juicy tidbits:

“An American man described as being devoted to his meticulously kept lawn has been charged with murder over the shooting of a 15-year-old boy who apparently walked across his garden,”

“Neighbors said Martin [the old man who shot the kid] lived alone quietly and was friendly.”

“He often sat in front of his one-storey home with its neat lawn and shrubbery and flag pole flying American and Navy flags, they said.”

“He was real protective over his yard and mowed it a lot, and sometimes even measured the grass,” Mr Fritts said. “

Chilis = Happy Prostates

I love it when my lifestyle habits are vindicated by scientific research.

So the latest research tells us that the substance in hot peppers that make them hot apparently kills prostate cancer-causing cells.

Yes, so my penchant for relentlessly imbuing every dish of food with habanero hot sauce is in fact due to my concern for the future of my prostate. . .

Boycott Craig

Thank god we have activists out there fighting for truth and justice in the world. Forget about stupid things like declining oil supplies, widespread governmental and bureaucratic corruption, conflict in the middle east, shady and downright evil corporate practices, child labor, global warming and subsequent increase of natural disasters, depletion of the Amazon rainforest for wood, gold, and oil, etc, etc. . .
These activist knights have plunged straight to the heart of the matter, and are bravely calling for a boycott of the new James Bond, because he is blonde and doesn’t comform to their cherished ideal of what this fictional character should truly look like. Thanks to people like these, who lay down their time and lives for all the rest of us, we can continue driving our SUVs about our suburbs, eating our McDonalds, and watching mind-numbing dramatizations on TV. Hooray! Join this boycott and worldwide crusade of concerned and outraged citizens today!

I’m moving to Sweden

Got to hand it to Sweden for taking the future into account in it’s policies: they’re planning on having an oil-free economy within 15 years.
Meanwhile, the US administration is still denying the existence of global warming and refusing to take any measures to curtail it’s excessive consumption of the world’s swiftly ebbing resources. In fact, they’re just building more SUVs.

Olympic Rant

OK, I apologize if I might dismay any wide-eyed Olympian enthusiaists out there, but I’ve got to get this off my chest: the Olympics are boring. I know they are trying really hard to draw in the younger crowd with X-games events like snowboard cross, but it’s still just really boring. Sometimes I think the problem with the Olympics is that the media, from the outset, generates as much over-the-top expectation of it as they can, knowing that it’s one of those sure-fire advertising blitzkriegs like the Superbowl. So they manufacture all these stupid little flashy shorts about “heroism,” and idolize all the American athletes as much as they can–but the fact is, super specialized individual sports are just not all that entertaining. Who really cares about who got the bronze medal in skeleton racing? Who cares about the .005 millimeters that gives the gold medal to the winning athlete in the ski jump?
Or let’s talk about these ice skating dances. So these people have spent their whole life training so that they can make it to the Olympics, and yet they still never seem to be able to land that damn “triple axel.” C’mon, I’m sure it’s real hard and they’re nervous and all–but isn’t this what they’ve been training for? It’s like it’s a big relief for us–the long-suffering audience–when they finally land the damn thing.
What I don’t understand is that the scoring seems to center around whether they land their triple axels or not–and yet they do all these pretty little dance steps and arm flourishes. What’s the damn point? Why don’t they just come out on the ice, do their freakin triple axels and whatever other little difficult jumps they need to do to get points, and then leave? All that other little dancey stuff we can watch on Disney On Ice! At least with Disney On Ice they’ll be wearing tasteful apparel.
My problem with the Olympics is that most events are so specialized and bizarre and one-shot-see-if-you-happen-to-be-lucky-this-time that it just doesn’t compel me very much. I have a hard time relating to someone who has been training for 10 years or whatever to do some really hard and basically pointless task. OK, there, I let the cat out of the bag. It just doesn’t seem worth it to spend your life training for some function that doesn’t have any other purpose other than winning medals.
Something like cross-country skiing I can understand. Or that event where they ski around and shoot things. That could almost have a purpose and function in real life. Although that doesn’t make it any more interesting to watch.
If they took something like snowboard cross or speedskating, and allowed the contestants to duke it out, throw a couple of punches here and there–that might be kind of interesting. Like hockey.
I’m not fooled by all the media hype. The Olympics are kind of lame.

By the way, though: I do admit to being kind of fascinated by these speed skating chicks. Their thighs are amazing, kind of scary but kind of hot in a scary kind of way, you know what I mean? And then there’s those sleek ass hugging suits they’re wearing, and the moment when they cross the finish line and then unzip their neckline a bit and then pull off their hood and wave their long hair out of that synthetic restriction and you realize suddenly in a kind of exultant revelation that they are a Real Woman!
Sorry. I have to generate interest where I can with these things you know. . .

Cosmic Cookbook

My friend Ank just finished a cookbook, and I highly recommend you obtain a copy for yourself and spread the love.

Get this

If you want to hear some real soul style R&B, I just saw that Anthony Hamilton came out with some new shit, Ain´t Nobody Worryin´. Check it out and get addicted.

2 Drinks a Day Keep the Fat Away

There is now scientific evidence in support of those of us who enjoy a cup of scotch or two at the end of the day: we are simply keeping our waistlines down! Yeah! (Reference: A Tipple Or Two A Day Will Keep You Trim) Now you no longer have to have that vaguely shameful feeling that you might be a lightweight alcoholic! Drink your two drinks and feel good about yourself while enjoying the delicious burn that emanates from your esophagus and belly from the slowly descending nectar! However, be warned: if you have four or more drinks a day, you can set yourself once again straight upon the path to obesity.
In other words, as every little piece of health research continually demonstrates, moderation is the key.

And You Wonder Why Americans Are Perceived As Stupid By The Rest of the World?

Beware, citizens of Dover! Thou hast exposed thineself to divine retribution and hellfire! Because thou hast chosen Proven Rationality over Blind Fear and Incomprehension, all denizens of your once semi-Godly town shall perish!

–Pat Robertson

Our Solar System–and you thought you knew it

http://starbulletin.com/2005/10/02/news/story04.html

So there’s a tenth planet called Xena, yes, named after the television chick, and they just discovered it has a moon, named Gabrielle of course after her sidekick. There are also two other distant astronomical entities which have been dubbed “Santa” and “Easterbunny” until official names are proffered.

Hard Science

Ladies and Gentleman: there’z a study just come out sayin [drum roll] The Human Brain Is Still Evolving! Yes Indeed! Amazing stuff, those scientists. And here we thought we’d reached the pinnacle of perfection . . .

“The ASPM mutation [one of the genes the study found 'evolving'] was more prevalent in European-related populations such as Iberians, Basques, Russians, North Africans, Middle-Easterners, and South Asians, and less often found among sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, and Native American Indians.”

Anybody reminded of Phrenology here? Once declared “the only true science of mind,” Phrenology sought to determine intelligence and cultural advancement based upon the size of one’s skull. Now perhaps we will determine one’s advancement based on the mutation of one’s microcephalin.

How about we gauge our evolutionary capacity by our capability to stop thinking like Nazis?

Hurricane Blues

You’ve got all these systems set up, you know, avenues of normalcy, the daily routine, pumping in water, pumping out oil, feeding the market with tourism. And then something like a hurricane comes along and floods every ghetto, every suburb, every living and working place indiscriminately to the point where there is no hope of return. When the toxic waters are finally drained, and the carcasses desposed, what is left are ravaged memories, and the settling in for the long haul of struggle and renovation. Everyone suffers in this process, but of course it is the poor and dispossessed who will bear the brunt of this breakdown of civilization. The winds rose out of the sea with indifferent vengeance and flooded the countryside and the city with overwhelming brute force and the people are starving and living in refugee camps and you wonder why they are looting stores empty of cashiers? Taking what is no longer possessed. The tenuous lines that separates people from one another are laid bare with the universal devastation of natural force. And then humanity is seen for what it has become while hidden in shelled chambers of society: a creature feeding on itself, impervious to the suffering of its own neglected roots, frightened of adapting to the idea of an unknown and newly painful world, where survival is dependent on creation and not on cannibalism. We can flip on the news and tell ourselves that the suffering depicted therein is not our own–until it happens to us, and it is our city that is broken and laid to its knees by the wilderness of what is beyond our control. We can pass by the projects in our cars and ignore the destitution apparent in the streets–until we find that everything that we thought we had has been taken.

Yes, like all things, devastation will pass, move on to another location, and some kind of future will be rewoven from the wreckage, pieces strewn on a string of need, and the lifeblood commerce of the city will begin to pump steadily again, and cars will go and stop and go–but the scars cannot be painted over, the stained memories of what once was. Remember, people of New Orleans, people of the world, think. What was it that you lost? And what is it that you can gain? Is normalcy, is the daily numbing routine of organized profit, is the ghettoes and the suburbs and the downtowns what you strive for in your soul? The city I knew briefly at night was a place of music in the face of despair. People came from all over the nation to stumble like a drunken child through your voodoo streets. What they came for was not racism, was not for oppression of the poor, was not for the forced separation of individuals from each other. They came for the uniqueness of your spirit, for the celebration of light and dark.

When you are broken, you can never be the same. You can be stronger.

News item: Pat Robertson, the US gov, and Chavez

Here’s a great little news story I read today about Pat Robertson’s comments about Venezuela’s Chavez, read the full story at: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/robertson.chavez/

Here’s some nice tidbits:

Chavez, as the news reports, “has the widespread support of his country’s poor.” “His opponents, largely drawn from the country’s middle and upper classes, accuse him of undermining democratic institutions.” (Chavez was elected in a recall referendum in 2004 by 58% of the voters. That’s better than Bush did, isn’t it?)
Condoleeza Rice, the Official White House Gimp, calls Venezuela a “negative force” in the region. Rumsfeld “has suggested Chavez’s government has interfered with the internal affairs of other countries in the region.” So because Chavez supports his country’s poor and sells oil in his country’s and region’s own best interest, he is a “negative force.” Or, in the more appropriate words of Pat Robertson, Chavez is a “‘a terrific danger’ bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas.”
So Pat Robertson, logically, called for the American special forces to “take him out.”
Here’s the part that really made me chortle, though. Rumsfeld states that “our department doesn’t do that kind of thing.” Right. The CIA hasn’t had anything to do with deposing other countries’ democratically elected presidents and destabilizing any foreign nations at all. No, of course not.
Anyway, I like this Chavez guy. He has the balls and political savvy to put up the middle finger to the United States, and of course, this makes him a “negative force” to all American corporate and political interests. And extremist fundamentalist Christian interests as well. Keep chuggin away Chavez.