A Fistful Of Teeth

The Authoritarian Temptation(poem)

2009-07-07T18:03:00.000-07:00

Originally wrote and posted this to my Facebook Notes last night, and will let the rather long intro and poem speak for themselves here, except to say that I hope you enjoy them and find them to be at least some food for thought.

Be seeing you.

Earlier this evening, I saw, via a link to a friend's FB profile that a friend of hers had posted there, a list of things to do on an anarchist site(what the site's precise orientation in that part of the spectrum I don't know), and, while going down the list, I saw some items there that I thought had at least some merit, but others, including this one, "Don't be afraid to disagree with kindness", that I thought could have been appropriately put on a list entitled, "30 Ways To Be A Complete Arsehole", and, particularly with some of the articles, posts and comments that have seen on-line, especially in recent years, from various parts of the Left, Centre and Right, well, my reaction was to sit down and write out a set of poems heavily lampooning various parts of the American political spectrum, including the Democratic Party, among several others, and even myself, and the authoritarian tendencies I have in my personality.

However, I decided, and yes, am admitting to being a complete chicken-shit here, but I decided not publish them here, because I do have friends who subscribe in one form or another to at least some tenets of the beliefs lampooned in those pieces.

Instead, I decided, while writing this piece, to publish this, the most serious and direct portion of all of the various pieces, because I think that this clearly and directly expresses a lot of the fears, doubts, and mis-givings, as well as my beliefs, about those, including myself at times, who would seek to impose their wills on everyone else around them, regardless of ideology, religion or other motivations.

There's an awful lot of political infantilism being pushed, both on and off the 'Net, right now, these being the hard, uncertain, and, at times, very frightening times, we find ourselves in, it becomes pretty easy to fall for at least one form of it if one's not careful.

It's very easy, if one feels justified enough, and especially if one over-estimates one's own righteousness, intellect and prowess, to advocate practically any course of action, no matter how stupid, criminal or murderous.

The Bolsheviks, Italian Fascists, Nazis, Red Guards, and Khmer Rouge, among many others, including liberal democracies like the US, Great Britain, France and others, believed, as many have before and since, that they were absolutely right, and absolutely justified in everything they said and did, no matter how ugly.

It's a very human failing, and Yours Truly's certainly no exception to this. Self-righteousness is one of the worst drugs I can think of, and practically no one's immune to it, in one form or another. Even libertarian conservatives and libertarian socialists and communists can fall victim to it, if they're aren't careful.

Before saying "I think everyone should...", I think that it might be best to see if one's thought the assumptions and implications of what one's advocating entirely through, because there are always devils in the details and unexpected consequences to one's notions, thoughts and actions.

Yes, one can over-think any given course of action, and end up either hesitating as to what to do until far too late, or not act at all.

But, acting too hastily, especially if one hasn't entirely thought out precisely what one hopes to accomplish, can also be disastrous.

There are no perfect solutions, but there are some that are better and far more equitable and humane than others, in my view.

Even then, there are going to be errors, great and small, made in bringing those about. The trick, so it seems to me, as to make as few as one possibly can, and not to make the same ones twice.

Anyway, have blathered on long enough.

The poem's below, and hope you enjoy it and that it gives at least some food for reflection, thought, and better-applied action.

Here Endeth The Lesson, and Be Seeing You.

Tyranny, no matter the intentions or ideas behind it,/

comes out to being much the same,/

whether by a tyrant ten thousand miles away,/

or ten thousand tyrants not a mile away./

It's the exaltation of power,/

for its own sake,/

wielded by people so caught up in themselves and their ideas/

that they examine their assumptions not./

The impulses towards bigotry, thievery, looting, rapine, /

despoilation, viciousness and genocide./

There are always, always, /

explanations, excuses, and more excuses,/

justification after justification,/

some meek and humbly given,/

others defiant,/

and all far too damned late./

After the thievery,/

the rape,/

and the murdering are over,/

often long since so./

Even the purest, even poets,/

can steal and murder/

with impunity, for a long time,/

and the greatest of glee./

All it takes is a touch of self-righteousness,/

the worst drug of all,/

and a lack of empathy./

All it takes is a will to supreme, absolute, unbridled power,/

and the willingness to use it on others as harshly as can be./

Whether from behind an expensive desk,/

or in the field,/

with a rifle, pistol,/

iron bar or shovel,/

it's easy, so easy, to call for murder of those one hates,/

or at least dis-likes./

It's easy, so easy, to imagine oneself as the heroic victor, the Hero or Heroine of the Revolution,/

the Supreme and Almighty,/

or at least a capable and empowered district officer./

It's quite another/

to imagine oneself/

as the despised,/

the oppressed,/

the robbed,/

the raped,/

murdered and buried like a dog in an un-marked grave./

It's quite another to actually have to live the experience,/

whether as murderer or victim./

Either way,/

it's a bastard, truly and completely so,/

all the way, all the way,/

all the way to Hell on Earth./

Seek not to dominate others, lest you be dominated in turn./

Avoid those who want power, however disguised, for its own sake./

Whatever their intentions and ideas,/

their motives and means,/

whether they truly believe their words,/

or coldly, cynically sell them /

like pills and soap/

pushed in adverts./

Notions are one thing, actions another,/

and those who, whether idealistic or cynical,/

push notions too far when applying them into action,/

are just as blood guilty all the same./

Politics, economics, war and such/

aren't games to be played,/

with people as the pieces to be shoved 'round/

at the players' whims./

They are business,/

the deadliest, most serious kind,/

in which lives, simple, ordinary, even stupid, human lives,/

matter far more than profits, position, or philosophical righteousness./

This isn't a game, nor a drama, in which one plays an assigned part,/

whether “heroic”, “villainous” or merely “supporting”./

This isn't a a yeshiva, seminary or academic debating society,/

where even the most outrageously criminal notions/

can be advanced, refuted, and then left while the contenders grab a bite./

This isn't a dryly academic text nor seminar./

This is reality, often confusing and messy,/

where power, resources, desires and murder oft combine./

It may be great history or fiction to read or see,/

but it's Bloody, literally bloody, Hell to live./

If one wants to see the end results of unthinking militancy and self-righteousness,/

just go and view a murder scene, morgue, or a battlefield after the slaughter's stopped./

There, one will see, wounds, death, stink, rot, and blue-bottle flies and maggots 'round the corpses of the dead, regardless of whichever side they fought.

This is what comes of feelings and prejudices left unexamined,/
notions and ideas unchallenged, especially by oneself,/
and words and actions too carelessly tossed out and inflicted on others./

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master,/

Abraham Lincoln said./

He was far more right than he knew when he said that./

Even those who proclaim the loudest about liberty and freedom can be tyrants,/

if they don't check themselves and their appetites./

Even those who proclaim they are for equality for all/

can lord it over others,/

if they let themselves./

Even those who seek righteousness can be sinners,/

if they allow themselves./

Those who would make themselves more than human/

doom themselves to less, far less, than so./

We are human, all too human, as Nietzsche titled one of his books,/

with all the virtues and faults of the race./

We aren't chattels, dummies nor dolls to be used and abused at someone's convienence, then thrown away./

We aren't gods nor devils./

We are merely human, all too human, that is all./

The Great Hadleyburg Turkey Shoot, Part Two

2009-05-13T00:50:00.000-07:00

2010 was the beginning of the four year-long period of Pacifican history known as “The Violent Years”, during which many Pacificans wondered if their country's social order would dissolve.

It started in March of that year, with an attempted secession by some of the inhabitants of a small town in the north-western part of the Department of Agricola, and an attempted coup in New Africa three months later. While both were quickly put down, there would be other out-breaks of violence of various sorts throughout Pacifica in the remainder of 2010.

Hadleyburg, in contrast, seemed to be an island of stability and calm in a sea of turbulence. But, that state was deceptive.

By 2010, Hadleyburg's population had doubled to around 600 inhabitants, both in the town proper and the half-dozen villages and hamlets in its immediate neighbourhood, and officially made its livelihood from the rail-road, motor transport and commercial warehousing industries.

Unofficially, Hadleyburg's real money came from the illicit production of drugs and alcohol. Although the Amalgamation of Communities of Pacifica's national government had legalised the use, production and distribution of narcotics, with the tax monies generated from their sale being devoted to drug and alcohol prevention and treatment programmes, in 2008, there was a loop-hole in the Narcotics Legalisation Act of 2008, that allowed some communities to opt-out of that legalisation. It was both legally and popularly known as “Local Option”, and Hadleyburg, like a number of its neighbours in the Middle Belt, took it.

There were two elements in the coalition that supported Hadleyburg's Local Option, the first of which were the religious and law-and-order elements in the town, most prominently represented by the pastor of the local Church of Joe, a vintage Painted Head GI Joe named Pastor George Hassenfeld, and Hadleyburg's Mayor, a vintage GI Joe Adventure Team Land Adventurer named Oran Speers. Both men, like much of their constituencies, were among Hadleyburg's original settlers,were passionately attached to the idealised vision they had of their home, and were also greatly afraid of the potential impact that the legalised sale and use of drugs and alcohol would have on the town.

The second element of the coalition was far more commercially-minded in its support of Local Option, and was composed of the two gangs that actually controlled much of Hadleyburg's business and politics, the Double-Ought Boys, so-called because of its use of shot-guns in dealing with rivals and opponents, and the Bulleteers.

Founded around 2005, both gangs started out with petty extortion against truck drivers and local merchants, and quickly worked their ways up to controlling the production, distribution and sale of illicit alcohol and drugs in Hadleyburg and its surrounding area. Along the way, they also entwined themselves with the local political establishment, with the Double-Ought Boys allying with Mayor Speers and two out of the four members of Hadleyburg's Town Council, and the Bulleteers supporting another Town Councillor(the fourth Councillor, a Marx Johnny West figure named Wallace Peppard, was considered too personally and politically weak by both gangs to be considered worth bothering with).

The Pacifican-Centralian War of 2007, with the sudden influx of soldiers and refugees that came into Hadleyburg as a result thereof, was taken full advantage of by Double-Ought Boys and Bulleteers alike, and both grew numerically and in the power of their grip on the area's politics and economy.

By October, 2010, there were 50 members of the Double-Ought Boys, and 43 members of the Bulleteers, and both had considerable influence over every institution in Hadleyburg and its out-lying area. Even the town's police chief, another vintage Painted Head Joe named John “Honest John” Patton, was in the pocket of the Double-Ought Boys, although he occasionally flirted with the idea of making a similar arrangement with the Bulleteers.

Both the Double-Ought Boys and the Bulleteers derived a good amount of their income from extortion and “protection” of the Trans-Pacifica Rail-Road's lines and facilities, the various transport and warehousing companies and their employees, and just about every business in the Greater Hadleyburg Area, as well as prostitution. But, the bulk of their money came from illegal drugs and alcohol, which were widely distributed and sold in not only Hadleyburg and its environs, but as far east as the out-lying parts of the Wabash area, and as far west as New Peshtigo.

Both were equally ruthless in buying out or shooting up any potential competitors who popped up, and in sealing up the market for their products, while arranging their respective shares of it between themselves.

But, that arrangement, which had held up for five years, began to break down as the Double-Ought Boys began expanding their trade into the Wabash area, which had previously been the Bulleteers' exclusive territory, and the Bulleteers, in turn, started operating in the areas west of Hadleyburg, which had been the Double-Ought Boys' territory.

Shortly after the break down of the arrangement, a number of small producers and distributors of both gangs' products started either disappearing or turning up quite dead in various places around Hadleyburg, and both gangs started preparing themselves for war.

That war broke out on the night of 10th October, 2010.

Amigo The Cat, 17th April 2009 Pics

2009-05-03T12:29:00.000-07:00

The trio of cat pics below are of my cat Amigo, and were taken on 17th April of this year.

Shot it in the bay window of my bedroom, which is one of his favourite perches.

Hope you enjoy these.

2009-05-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

We, The Dead, Salute You

2009-05-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

The pics below were shot and edited a week or so ago.

They're, for better or worse, my little commentary on the recent mass shootings that have taken place in the US and Germany in the past few months.

Make of them whatever you wish.

2009-05-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Great Hadleyburg Turkey Shoot

2009-04-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

This is the first part of a ten-part action figure story that I started to-day.

Hope you enjoy it.

Of all the towns found in the Pacifica Department's Middle Belt, one of the oddest, and certainly the most corrupt, was Hadleyburg.

Located well in between the major cities of New Metropolis and Blackwater, it was settled by a small agricultural colony of vintage GI Joes in 1999, and, prior to Pacifica's independence from Centralia three years later, the settlement eked out a marginal living from raising cabbage, corn and potatoes.

But, after independence, the need to connect the department of New Scandinavia to Pacifica's north with Blackwater, Central City and New Metropolis resulted in the construction of National Routes 4 & 6, which respectively ran from east to west and from north to south, and the east to west Trans-Pacifica Railroad.

Being situated by the proposed lines of all three routes, Hadleyburg was in an ideal position to take full
advantage of its position, and take advantage it did, of the road and rail construction companies, their workers, the Pacifica Department's government, and the Amalgamation of Pacifica itself, for all it was worth, and then some.

There were those individuals, from both in- and outside of Hadleyburg, who raised their voices against the feather-bedding, over-charging, sweetheart deals and out-right theft that went on before, during and after the highways' and rail-road's construction. But, ways of shutting them up, whether through bribery, bullying, blackmail or bashing in of heads, could be and were always found and used.

So much for Hadleyburg's critics.

The town shot up like a weed in a tropical field, and, by the time the Pacifican-Centralian War of 2007 happened, it was a thriving mini-metropolis of some 300-plus souls. During the 10 day-long war, Hadleyburg, like most of its Middle Belt neighbours, suffered little directly from its effects, but was ideally positioned to press its advantages on the armies of soldiers and refugees that passed through or stayed in the area. And yes, take advantage of them, Hadleyburg and its citizens did.

It kept on doing that after the war, with all of the refugees from the devastated towns and cities temporarily settled near Hadleyburg and its neighbours for the several months after the war that reconstruction took.

Like with the highway and rail-road construction, there were voices that protested the various forms of robbery, overt and disguised, inflicted on them by the good citizens of Hadleyburg. But, as before, they were either bought out, beaten up, or broken in one way or another.

A few small-time malefactors were offered up to the departmental and Amalgamated authorities as sacrificial lambs, with much trumpeting and fanfare in the local media.

But, the real villains, and the whole rotten show, went merrily on, even after most of the refugees returned home, and Hadleyburg remained snug, and smug, in its piously hypocritical ways.

In the autumn of 2010, all of that would change in the course of a night.

The Killing Mood And The Killing Season(poem)

2009-04-17T06:37:00.001-07:00

Yet more material prompted by the current malaise that I see on-line, and my own reactions to it.

The sun shines,/

the wind blows,/

and leaves tremble on branches./

These have gone on long before/

we small, poor things began struggling/

underneath them./

Stars, formed long before we came to be,/

send their light outwards to worlds we shall ne'er see,/

and have burnt out, long before what we assume to be/

eternal, solid and ever-lasting, was even an idea./

Kingdoms, republics, constitutions,/

markets, churches, and art/

have come, gone, been revived and faded out,/

over and over again./

Faded out, driven out or burnt out/

because of the killing moods in the minds of men/

made manifest in the killing seasons./

We are filled up,/

and fill ourselves up with/

all manner of notions/

about how the world has been,/

and should be./

It's something we all do,/

for we all have our view-points,/

and only the dead are truly neutral./

It's understandable,/

for we all have our own lives and struggles,/

some better, some worse, than others./

But, it's unforgiveable,/

when we ball up fists, pick up weapons,/

and go forth, like so many Christian, Muslim, Jewish or other soldiers,/

marching, not as to war, but war itself./

It's criminal when, in the name of our god, gods, constitutions or creeds,/

we loot, burn, rape and kill./

It's stupidity itself,/

when we lie to ourselves and others,/

in saying that all is justified and sanctioned,/

even if by the ancient and mere excuse,/

"They had it comin', for being on the wrong side,

wrong place, wrong time, wrong colour,/

when men fell into the killing mood,/

and the killng season began./

If they had it comin',/

so do we all./

For self-sorrow, dis-satifisfaction,/

jealousy, envy and hatred can consume us all,/

if we let them./

Loneliness, frustration and bitterness/

can make the best into beasts,/

and the bestial into far worse./

If we let them./

When we do,/

we've got it comin',/

just as they do,/

and revenge takes its course,/

the bells and gongs sound again,/

'cos of another killing mood,/

another killing season./

Some say that's the cost of freedom,/

and that some principles matter more than life itself./

Maybe so, but they who say such things/

have either never suffered loss at the hands/

of those gripped by a killing mood in the killing season,/

or have grown callous and stupefied by their loss./

It's so easy and cheap to run one's mouth,/

in one's living room, bed-room or bar-room,/

and call for the deaths of others, who one neither knows nor cares about./

It's much harder and dearer to actually do,/

in the killing mood, in the killing season./

Fine speeches,/

full of wonderous, or maybe just ordinary,/

oratory, at funerals and ceremonies,/

are made over bags of dead meat,/

whether freshly-killed or long since dead./

The causes for which they died were always fair and just,/

the deeds they performed heroic, and the dead immortal./

But, this ignores that the causes may have been dubious,/

the dead, when alive, mixes of fairness and failibility, same as anyone else,/

and that the dead are dead and gone, never to return in the state known in life./

Bodies change and transmute,/

shedding flesh and muscle,/

bone and marrow,/

until they become something else entirely./

Don't expect to see them,/

as they were,/

ever again./

Too much damage has been done,/

and too much time passed,/

to un-do the deeds made by men/

gripped by the killing mood/

in the killing season./

Words comfort the living,/

but do nothing for the dead./

Words are for the living,/

not the dead,/

for only the living need comfort,/

however small and dubious./

The dead are beyond such cares and considerations./

The sun rises and sets,/

as our sphere turns 'round it./

The wind gusts and settles,/

and gusts again, as the patterns dictate./

The leaves sprout, flourish, tremble, fade and die,/

and new ones sprout again, as the seasons change./

They go on, and shall until it's their turn to fade and die./

They don't see, hear, think nor feel about/

the stupidites, follies and crimes/

of men gripped by the killng mood in the killing season./

Only men can do those./

Only we poor, stumbling creatures,/

under leaves, wind and sun./

Showdown At The No-Where Corral(poem)

2009-04-14T19:15:00.001-07:00

This has been inspired by what have read about various mass shootings and the like over the years, especially recently, the descriptions of the personalities of their perpetrators that have read in various news accounts, and also a bit of lookin' into myself. Can see where I've a fair degree in common with such folks, the anger, frustration, puzzlement and wondering why am not doing better in the world, feelings of entitlement and self-pity, and so on.

By stating this, does that mean that am going to do of the same??? Hell, no. To the points that have worked it through, the end results don't justify the costs, to others or myself. Rather, am trying to do what the late Yukio Mishima put it, when asked why he wrote his novels, plays, etc, as he did, because he otherwise would have been a mass murderer. Not the most pleasant reason, surely, but it worked for him for a long time. His 1970 suicide doesn't entirely abrogate the logic behind that notion, I think. He did that for a variety of reasons.

As for me, well, suicide, even for political reasons, is a mug's game to me. Sure, you get your name in the media and some people will remember you after you're dead. But, being dead's just that, and there's sweet fuck-all one can do once one's in that state.

We all die at one time or another. But, the important thing is how one lives while one's here. I know, big talk comin' from a poor autie-boy who lives with a cat. Well, even poor autie-boys with cats occasionally get it right.

Enough blather. Let's do it to it, and hope you like this.

The sun beats down, yet another day, on yet another part of the world and the poor creatures under it/

Big city, suburb, small town or village./

The difference matters not./

The sun beats down, like it did on small towns like Tombstone, Bodie, or Lincoln in the Old West./

It beats down, just as it did on Western movie sets, from Bronco Billy Anderson's to Clint Eastwood's./

It beats down, just as it did on places like Austin, Texas, San Diego California, and little towns and villages in Finland and Germany,/

on the days when ill-raised human kittens picked up a weapon or two, or four, or however many to do the job,/

and had themselves a gun-fight at the No-Where Corral./

Picked up a weapon, and were far from the only ones in history to do so,/

to go settle some long-standing disputes they'd with the world,/

bosses, co-workers, school-mates and family,/

and with themselves./

Picked up a gun, knife, or whatever else struck their fancies./

One even used a flame-thrower, made at home with his own two hands./

All to settle some long-held vendetta or blood feud with the world around them./

Not that others haven't ./

Oh, they did, usin' politics, economics, race, religion, whatever, for their reasons,/

to do cheap and nasty deeds in foul and stinking wars, feuds, vendettas and such./

And all of the dead had it comin', but we've all got it comin', dependin' on whom ya talk to./

No-one's immune from hatin' bad enough to kill,/

and no-one's immune from bein' hated bad enough to be killed./

Yet, we're always surprised when Showdowns and Gun-Fights at the No-Where Corral happen./

We're always shocked, shocked, shocked to High Heaven when this happens./

But, we're never shocked enough to do somethin' about it,/

or the poverty, desperation, alienation and loneliness behind it./

Never shocked enough to knock off glorifyin' the shameful./

Never shocked enough to put enough of a check on our assumptions and appetites./

Never shocked enough to really examine ourselves and see the potential mass murderer, serial killer,/

nasty murdering button man inside us./

The part of us that, like a tom-cat killing kittens to bring a queen cat into estrus again,/

can and will use violence if felt necessary or pushed hard enough./

Shocked, my arse, we are, by all this./

We're long past shock and into deep numbness, if not coma./

There is only so much bad news that one can take,/

before we slip into the waking dreams of complacency, fear or anger./

Just as the doers of such deeds live in a waking dream of anger,/

fear,/

humiliation,/

self-pity,/

entitlement,/

and loneliness./

The long waking dream time born of frustration after frustration,/

failure after failure,/

humilation after humilation,/

all of which builds,/

piece by piece, link by link,/

second after minute after hour after day after month after year after decade,/

until some folks run amok, whether with a kris, pistol or rifle./

The weapon matters not so much, as the result./

Dead and wounded strewn about the field of massacre,/

like so many store dummies scattered by a tornado or hurricane./

Just like when 19th year olds play at armed diplomacy,/

on the orders of older "betters" who never have and never will./

Just like kids shoot each other over slights and insults./

Just like when dealer kills dealer over turf./

Just like when husband beats wife, or wife husband./

Diffferent people, different causes, and same sorry results./

Everyone has their reasons, I've mine, you've yours, he's his and she's hers./

Everyone can kill, man, woman, child, adult and ancient./

Everyone can die for no good reason./

It's what in our heads and the world around us, as much as the instruments at hand,/

that can kill./

It's the voices from inside and outside that we let dictate to us that can kill./

It's the stupid assumptions, pre-conceptions and prejudices we have that can kill./

It's the anger, fear, indifference and self-indulgence we have that can kill./

They are the motive force, the weapons are the instruments,/

of the longing to butcher./

But, this is forgotten, usually, in the debates and dramas that arise in the aftermath./

Debates driven and dominated by monists, some saying it's guns that are responsible, others saying we need more guns in every place and in every hand./

They are both wrong, because in their maniacal monism, they don't see that/

neither unarmed nor armed societies are polite ones, if the ground rules aren't changed./

If more emphasis isn't given to Mercy, Hope, Charity and the better qualities of our nature,/

If people are seen as dolls or objects, and the ethic is what can you do for me,/

If stupid arrogance is given its head,/

there is no meaningful change,/

and no peace, merely truces until the next blood-bath./

Some blame the media and others blame drugs, licit and illicit, and alcohol./

They play their parts, sure./

But, they aren't alone in this./

There is no one sole cause, and no sole solution./

This isn't the movies or a television episode,/

with everything neatly wrapped up by the end of running time./

This is life, as messy and complex as it gets./

This is death, with all its stink and rot,/

and this is what comes of the thought that using a weapon solves all./

There are no quick, easy, simple solutions to this,/

just add water, mix and pop in the oven./

There are no guarantees,/

and if one wants one, better buy a toaster instead./

There are only us poor creatures under the sun,/

that shines down on us all alike,/

on scenes of beauty and horror,/

as it has before we came and will after we've gone./

One day, perhaps, it won't shine down on Showdowns at the No-Where Corral./

But, that's up to us, 'cos the Sun's just a star in the sky,/

and like God In His Heaven, Or the Czar of All The Russias, is very far away.

For What It's Worth(Yep, am stealing from Buffalo Springfield here)

2009-04-07T12:04:00.001-07:00

Have been mentally churning, discussing and debating with myself, about a whole range of topics and how best to present them here and elsewhere on-line over the past few months, weeks and days now.

Really still have no idea of how best to do it without going off onto my usual rambling rants, etc. At the same time, have got to get some of the notions I have out of my head, however imperfectly yet readably.

So, am giving it yet another go here, with a mix of of aphorisms and short phrases. Don't know how successful will be at this, nor if anyone will read any of this.

Still, best to spew this out, before it makes me even more troubled and embittered than already am.

So, here goes.

Mao Ze-Dong was right when he said that revolutions are an act of violence. They can't be done gently nor politely. It means doing whatever it takes to successfully get and hold power, no matter how immoral, amoral, vile or foul.

It also means, especially for the successful revolutionary, having to live with oneself and one's deeds for the rest of one's life, and especially with hard and unpleasant memories.

Forget who said that revolutions devour their own children, but whoever did was also right. Look at the histories of most revolutions, and one finds a particular faction within any revolutionary movement grabbing power from others, and purging their opponents in one way or another. If one goes down the revolutionary path and is successful, best to be prepared to purge or be purged at one time or another.

Revolutions and wars create expectations that, generally speaking, will be dashed in peacetime and reconstruction. High ideals and hopes are necessary to starting and keeping a revolutionary or war effort going, but, especially with the many compromises and hard realities involved in administering and builidng a new society, many of those will either be greatly diminished or set aside.

If one's aiming at seizing and holding power, one had best be prepared to deal with the small, niggling details of governing and administration, as well as with the grand issues of politics. This means worrying as much about the macaroni ration per person, as it does the construction of a new economic order. If one's not prepared to deal with the many small, irritating details and duties that come with political and economic power, one shouldn't aspire to having it.

These are horribly uncertain, anxious times, in which everything seems to be falling apart, with the centre unable to hold. Maybe so. On the other hand, one doesn't have to look that far back into history to see that there have been many such occasions, some of where that perception turned out to be accurate, and others where it wasn't. While perceptions matter, so does truth. That means paying as much as much attention as possible to what's going on around oneself, comparing that with others, especially those who aren't as like-minded as oneself, and always, always, considering the source of whatever information one gets.

Eyes and brains, Watson, as Sherlock Holmes used to say.

Above all, resist the temptations to fall into an anxious, panicked state as much as falling into ones of either fatuous complacency or fatalistic escapism. None of those states do one or others any good at all.

Have trouble with those states myself, so can understand the temptation to go into any one of those and stay there. But, being in a permanent state of alarm, torpor or resignation aren't terribly helpful in solving problems, or even simple survival.

Don't forget to laugh, especially at oneself when one's being silly and taking oneself overly seriously. This has the dual advantage of endearing oneself to others, and, more importantly, keeping a sense of logic and proportion about oneself's and one's abilities.

All of us like to think that we are, in one way or another, the smartest, sexiest, wisest beings who ever lived. That's a quite natural way of perceiving ourselves, really. But, we all do and say silly things from time to time as well. My goodness, we all have to use the toilet, just as our ancestors did, and our descendants will after us. No one is especially dignified in that state, not even, say, George Washington or Simon Bolivar. If they strained while evacuating their bowels, well, so do I, you and everyone else on this planet.

Most of all, don't lie to oneself or say that you can't be suckered, because that's when one really sets oneself up for being suckered very badly and on a grand scale. Will admit, however humiliating it might be to me, to having been suckered many times in the past, and have no doubt that can be suckered now and in the future. The trick is, I think, not to fall for the same kind of con over and over again. There will always be new and different, or at least new variants on older cons, to fall for. Just keep your eyes and brains actively working, and be prepared to admit, cheerfully or not, whenever you're wrong or have been suckered.

As for lying to oneself, well, I think that that's one of the worst sins that one can commit against oneself and others,'cos it creates false expectations and hopes that can't be fulfilled, and, sooner or later, it will be seen for what it is. If one's going to be a bastard, which I don't recommend, at least be an honest bastard, especially with oneself. In the end, that's to whom one really has to answer, most of all.

Personally speaking, there are times I can be intelligent, witty, even charming and kind. But, I can also be angry, bitter, frustrated and greatly disappointed, both in myself and others. I can be quite nasty when I want to be, but also cowardly. I have often engaged in silly, fiery rhetoric on many occasions in my life, and regret having done so. I try not to do so now, but don't always succeed. I can lie to myself and indulge myself in self-pity and fits of pique, the same as anyone else.

I can often despair, both for the state of the world and myself, and feel hard done by. Maybe, in some areas, I have been. But, such feelings can't and won't get things done and make life better, for others nor myself.

Most of all, am no plaster saint. Am a human being, with at least some of the virtues and many of the defects, that all of us have, in one form or another. Haven't read The Lives Of The Saints, but, from little have heard about it, even the many Catholic saints were themselves highly flawed, imperfect, human beings.

Maybe, that's the most important lesson of all from such tales, whether one believes in deities, saints and all the rest of that or not. We are all poor, imperfect creatures struggling under the sun. What matters most are the choices, decisions and actions we make while we are alive and kicking. That goes for me as much as for any of you.

If you should read this, I hope you'll find some, if not all, of what have had to say here to be sound and of some value. If not, well, that's your choice to make, and more power to you. If you do, wonderful, as am just egotistical enough to be flattered whenever someone thinks I've something of value to say or do.

If you've made it all the way through reading this, whether you agree, disagree, or don't care either way, I congratulate you on making the effort, and taking the time to do so.

On that note, I leave you, and, as always, leave you with a line from one of my favourite television shows of all time, "The Prisoner", Be Seeing You.

How Fast Can You Clear Leather?(poem)

2009-04-05T20:51:00.000-07:00

How fast can you clear leather????/

That's what I want to know./

I've heard you, and so many others,/

talk so much crap about making a revolution,/

on-line, off-line, all the damn time./

Don't matter what ideology you espouse,/

Left, Right, Centre, whatever./

I hear a lotta mouth-running,/

shrill, hysterical and wanna-be brutality./

I see a lotta paranoia,/

whether from New World Order types,/

9/11 Truthers, Anarchists, Libertarians,

Neo-Nazis, what the Hell ever,/

all bellowing about this, that and the other./

Folks believing the world'll end in 2012./

Better stock up on guns, ammo and freeze-dried food,/

'cos supplies are going fast./

Isn't that it???/

The sheer, savage joy of being among the “elect”,/

“The Chosen”, destined to survive./

The ones with all the inside dope,/

straight up, no God-Damn chaser./

Not like the “sheeple”, those on whom you look down./

The mugs, the suckers, the peasants destined to work for you in the New World to come,/

or die and be buried like dogs in unmarked graves./

Maybe, they are,/

maybe they are, /

I dunno./

But, before you get too damn smug and secure/

in your knowledge and righteousness,/

I gotta ask,/

how do you know you're not being played?/

How do you know that you won't be the poor sap up against a wall?/

Who made you God with the right to decide who lives or dies,/

and how fast can you clear leather???/

One day, maybe, someone will ask you that question,/

and he or she'll have a gun in his or her hand,/

same as you./

When they ask you that,/

it'll be Put Up or Shut Up Time,/

'cos that's the way it is in revolution and war./

Put Up, Shut Up, or be Strung Up, if you're lucky,/

by your heels from a gas station ceiling, /

a tree or lamp-post./

Left to twist, rot and stink in the wind,/

'till cut down and thrown in a hole,/

Like a discarded beer can or piece of rotten meat./

There's plenty wrong in the State of Denmark,/

Sweden, Britain, Canada, the US, Colombia, Zimbabwe,/

almost anywhere and everywhere you care to name./

There's plenty broken, corrupted, rotten through and through./

There's plenty of work, long, hard work, that we need to do./

Lotsa blame to go 'round,/

to politicians, pundits, officials, academics,/

policemen, soldiers, sailors, marines,/

insurgents, resurgents, mujahideen,/

poets, publicans and the public at large./

'Cos we all played our parts/

in these sordid little dramas./

Spurred on by propaganda, rumour and fear,/

that turned to anger and hatred./

We let our glands do the walking, talking,/

fighting and killing./

Or, at least were content to let others do it for us./

Vicious little colonial wars,/

in which Yankee and Raghead,/

Ethiop' and Somali,/

Russkie and Chechen,/

all going at each other./

Going for blood, land, goods./

Going all the way,/
'Till one side or the other ups and dies./

All spurred along by idea and word pimps,/

with their half-truths, quarter-truths and plain old lies./

Some of them fought and died, sure./

But, most are still around, still peddling/

their wares for all the suckers to lap up,/

like a dog sucking up water from a dish./

Yeah, it's a real inspiring picture to see,/

a great little spectacle to take in,/

so edifying and wonderful to behold./

Oh, yeah, such gratifying grievance and hatred to see, hear, taste, touch and smell./

Why not have a go at each other???/

There's enough needless cruelty, death and misery,/

and y'all wanna add on some more???/

Sure, go ahead. Why not???/

Kill 'em all and forget about keeping score./

Just so long as they're dead, right?/

Guess that's the clue./

Just so long as they're dead,/

except, of course, for you./

But, revolutions don't necessarily work out the way/

that one plans./

What with the murder, maiming, demolition and destruction,/

the purges, show trials and firing squads./

The bitter disappointments of peace that follow the exaltation of war./

Building's never quite as sexy as destroying, at least for some.,/

and they would find the ideals for which they fought,/

betrayed by those who were quicker, smarter, more cunning and better organised./

In the end, they'd be either pensioned off, shunted aside or purged/

to make room for the party hacks and opportunists/

that always come along and make a social order their own./

If you want real change, then make it, and make it good./

But, know what you're about./

Read, discuss, debate, figure, plan./

But, most of all, THINK!!! before you act./

Think long, hard and all the way through./

Think before you pick up a weapon./

Think before you pull a trigger or a pin./

'Cos if you don't, then someday, somehow,/

your choices and actions will come back on you./

It may be a revenge killing,/

made by someone whose loved one you shot./

It may be a show trial and purge,/

launched by comrades you once knew and loved./

It may be simply being crushed by the weight of bad memories/

and lies, as you lay a-bed, waiting to darkness to fall over you/

for the last time./

There's more than one way of making change./

More than one way of running a rail-road./

More than one way of getting things done./

Force and compulsion may win wars, but they never convince./

'Specially over the long run./

If you wanna be a self-fulfilling prophet of doom, go ahead./

That choice is yours./

But, so's the responsibility for everything you say and do,/

now and in the years to come./

And, if you should lose, don't whine, cry, shirk nor plead for mercy,/

'cos if you've not shown it to others, why should it be shown to you?/

That's the logic that wounds, the logic that kills,/

and it don't make a dime's worth of difference how true or pure you are./

'Cos, that's what comes of clearin' leather, no matter how noble the cause./

So, how fast can you clear leather?/

That's something you'll be needing to know/

if you go down the violent road.

Johnny Got His Gun And Used It

2009-04-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

Originally posted this on my Facebook profile at 2:50 AM this morning, and am republishing it here to share with those of you out there who aren't on FB. Whatever conclusions you draw from this, if any, I leave to you.

Sitting here at home, bored out of my mind, feeling lonely, horny, and all the rest of that good hoo-ha, and frustrated at not being able to connect with Embarq to pay my phone bill.

Had thought about going out to the Beauty Bar where a friend of mine was dee-jaying, just to say Hello to him and to get out of the house for a bit. But, realised that had got up too late, and, by the time I got through doing my ablutions prior to going out, waiting for and getting on the bus and all that, not to mention the all-important question of money, which, for someone on a pension like me, can mean the difference between being reasonably comfortable later on in the month, or barely, and I mean barely, scraping by, and decided not to do it after all.

This leading to further frustration and anger, at myself and others, combined with perserverating on a variety of topics that pop up when am feeling this way, and could see that was working myself up into a fine snit.

So, how to deal with this??? Well, there are a variety of ways of doing it, some more or less successful than others. For me, I chose trying to reconnect again with Embarq, which I successfully did a few minutes ago, and what am doing now, which is to write about my feelings in the context of this essay, which is also about the recent shootings in Binghamton, New York and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the kinds of frustrations and inability to deal with them constructively that these shooters, and many others like them, had.

So, now the focus shifts from my little microcosm to the larger picture of those shootings.

From what have absorbed from the various AP, CBS, and BBC news videos have down-loaded from YouTube on those shootings, as well as the few AP news articles via Yahoo News that have read thus far, Jivverly Wong and the Pittsburgh shooter, whose name eludes me at the moment, couldn't have been more different in age, national origin, or motives for their deeds.

Wong was a 41 year-old Vietnamese American of Chinese extraction, who had immigrated to the US in 1990, had worked at a small number of firms in New York and California, but whose command of English remained limited. This was a constant source of frustration to him, and an extremely sore point with him as well, if the sources cited above are correct. He was described as a loner, who had a strong work ethic, but few close friends, and who felt that he never got the respect he deserved.

He'd been taking English courses at the immigrant centre in Binghamton where he waged his one-sided shoot-out on Friday, but was also out of work and frustrated by living on the $200 a week unemployment insurance payments he was getting, and being unable to find work.

The Pittsburgh shooter I know far less about about, save that he was 23 years old, of Polish-American origin, and was extremely fearful that the Obama Administration was coming to take away his rifle and pistols. He was also known around his neighbourhood as an often quarrelsome, contentious young man who had engaged in fist-fights with some of his neighbours on one occasion, and was generally avoided by them.

Either way, both of them, as well as so many of the perpertrators of mass shootings and other forms of mass murder, not only in this country, but in Germany, Finland, the UK, Canada, Australia and Japan, among others, over the past 60 years, and there are cases, albeit much fewer and far between, that go back to around 1890 or so, in this country, seem to have been men(there have been a few, but far fewer in number, female mass murderers, like the young woman who became notorious as the perpetrator of the 1980 San Diego schoolyard shootings), who were either only partially- or poorly socialised into their respective societies and cultures, had a hard time finding work and other social activities into which they fit, and who had an extremely difficult time coping with the various failures and frustrations in their own lives.

According to one article, a LiveScience one, whose author's name I can't recall, that I read after the Alabama shootings two or three weeks back, alcohol abuse may also play a role in at least some mass shooters decisions to engage in one-sided urban combat, and certainly the current economic situation and its anxieties and frustrations may as well. Also, a strong interest in war, things military, and weaponry may also be another factor.

But, these are all parts of what, why and how some people make the decision to go out and kill or wound as many people as they possibly can, before, as in many cases, they commit suicide.

From my perspective, which is derived from my own personal experiences as well as the readings that have done, on-line and off-line, about these, it seems to me that such killings are a combination of extreme frustration and rage, both at oneself and the world and the world around him or herself, strong feelings of entitlement, self-pity and personal failure, weak or non-existent social support networks, and a tremendous feeling to total, or least partial, alienation from the society and culture around oneself.

Even then, these factors, like the others have mentioned above, don't always guarantee that one will pick up a gun, knife or other weapon(In the case of one German mass murderer I read about in the Wikipedia entry on mass murders, a home-made flame thrower was the weapon of choice for him), and go out to kill or wound one's neighbours, work-mates, acquaintances or complete strangers.

Many find some other outlets,whether it's posting comments to news articles on-line, drinking, what have you, for their rage and frustration.

For me, it is writing essays like these, as well as taking action figure photographs, or, when feeling particularly anxious or hard-pressed, writing or calling close family members or friends and talking with them about the anxieties, frustrations and other feelings that am having.

But, in my life, have also had many such times when have had no such outlets nor could I contact those family members nor friends and speak with them about my feelings of loneliness, etc. So, I had to get through it by simply gutting it out, letting the feelings I had happen, but not, and you can feel free to ascribe whatever possible motivations and circumstances you like to this, taking any actions that would have a severe and permanent impact on myself and others.

Mind you, too, while have often felt myself pushed to the point of despair where I felt like killing myself or doing of the same to others, I haven't, for a variety of reasons. Even then, I can also say that perhaps have never had my back pressed so tightly up against the wall that those were the only viable options I felt I had on hand. I hope to God that I never do feel that desperate, and also hope that I can find some other way, however stumbling, confused and uncertain, of resolving those problems and dealing with my feelings in a beneficial, constructive, for both others and myself, manner.

I do not know, and won't actually know, until am in that situation. In the meantime, all I can do is work with what I have, avoid feeling entitled and self-pitying(Stephen Fry's description of self-pity as being the most dangerous emotion strikes me as being the soundest, because it can, as he also said, consume everything, and lead to self-fulfiling prophecies coming true), and work as best I can on improving both my own life and the lives of others as best I can. It means my making more of an effort to get out of the house a bit more, and interacting with people in ways that I find fulfilling, and that I hope they will as well. It means, as E. M. Forster wrote in his introduction to Howard's End, "only connect", both on-line and off-line with others.

There is an element of gambling in this, as in most human endeavours, as much of the time, as have learnt from personal experience, many of these won't necessarily work out, for a variety of reasons, some of which I shall perhaps never know, nor know entirely. Nonetheless, the risk's still worth taking, even if only for its own sake, though would love to have greater rewards than that if possible. However, counting on getting those rewards, in my view, would be foolish. If they come, they come. If not, will be disappointed, surely, but will also find other venues and outlets to try.

Of course, could just sit home and do nothing, or next to nothing, and have guaranteed results, but those aren't necessarily the sort of results I want to have for the rest of my life.

Either way, anything beats stewing in my own mental juices, which I have done for much of my life, and many of these shooters, and many others beside, have done and do.

As for any suggestions or prescriptions I might have on the greater problems of mass shootings and other forms of mass murder, gun and other types of violence in its various forms and resolving the problems within the social orders of which they're a part, I've only the following highly inexpert suggestions and opinions to make at hand.

One's that some legal restrictions do need to be placed and enforced on the possession of military-grade weapons, ammunition and magazine clips available to the general public. This doesn't mean that criminals and those who are inclined, for one reason or another, won't be able to get their hands on some of these. Let's not make that mistake in assuming they entirely would be prevented from doing so. There are ways, especially through off-the record or illegal gun and other weapons sales or thefts, of getting weapons if one wants them badly enough, knows where to get them, and is willling to pay the requisite price for them, of obtaining them, and some will do it, as surely as the sun rises in the morning.

The idea is to make getting them a lot harder than is currently the case in the US. Even then, it's only one part of any overall solution to this problem.

Another suggestion is that institutions, public, private, religious and secular, need to do a better job of outreach than many of them have to people, especially in working-class and poor communities, who may be at risk of engaging in such behaviours well beforehand. There are, by now, at least some identifiable patterns and commonalities, so much so that the FBI, among other law enforcement agencies, have worked out profiles of mass murderers and their behavioural patterns. It means providing psychiatric, psychological and other social integration services, and getting the best available people and resources to do the job of, whenever and wherever possible, finding these individuals and stopping them from going on rampages, not through repressive means like imprisonment or confinement in mental institutions and the like, but through various forms of therapy and social integration that, I believe, would ultimately be much more effective in the long run than mere repression and confinement would be.

Again, that is only another part of any overall solution to the problem of mass murder.

Another suggestion still is for a real cultural change in the way that the mass media, off-line and on-line, depicts and describes such shootings and violence in general. Whether journalists, film-makers and other dramatists, what have you, there is too often the tendency to report mass shootings and other forms of violence as out-of-the-ordinary, freakish occurences, which, by now, they are most certainly not, with relatively little and superficially-explained explanations of the perpetrator's background and current circumstances, as well as the social, economic and political circumstances around them and their deeds, given.
Some of this is, I believe, because of the limitations of space and time in media presentations, whether journalistic or dramatic, and getting information on the perpetrator and his or her background, especially during the active police investigation phase of the aftermath of such incidents. Still, I believe the effort to get as much information about the perpetrator and the social context in which such incidents occur can and must be made as much as possible.
Some of this, however, may also be due to a reluctance, however understandable, to question many of the cultural, social and other general assumptions found within the culture in which these crimes occur, are reported or dramatised later on, about just how well and fulfiling that social order actually is for many of its members.

I also believe that the depiction of violence in dramas, whether film, television, or stage, needs to be made much more realistic, not just in the actual physical details, but, more importantly, in the psychological and social details of it, and its impacts on those who perpetrate it, its victims, those close to both, and the wider community around them. It means showing the psychological and social costs of the use of violence, whether by the duly constituted authorities, criminals, or other individuals, and the very real pain and loss that its use has.

There are some film and television dramas, like "Unforgiven", "Homicide: Life On The Street", and "The Wire" that have done that in the recent past, but, compared to the numbers of shoot-'em-up, martial arts and other violent(usually described with the euphemisms "action" or "action-adventure"), they are small in number, and I can't think of anything currently on right now, which says something about my relative ignorance of the current goings-on in films and television as much as anything else, that comes close.

There are very real costs, often hideously high, to the use of violence, and I think that it's important to show those as realistically as possible in order to get the point about those costs across to as many people as possible.

The last two suggestions that I've to make here are directed at those who are close, or relatively so, to people around someone who may be at risk of engaging in something like mass murder, and to those who may be at risk, or at least feeling desperate enough to give it a go.

To the first, I would say please, if you can, try to engage with your loved one well before something like this can even potentially occur. Yes, it's hard to try and communicate with someone who, for various reasons, is difficult, if not impossible, to communicate and reason with, and the effort may be self-defeating in the end, someone who is difficult, if not impossible, to communicate with, but making the effort, and, if you can't succeed, getting whatever help you can for your loved one wherever you are, is far better time and effort spent than coping with the aftermath and disgrace of being associated with the perpetrator of yet another mass shooting, or similar crime.

To the latter, if you can, and, more importantly, want to, find something, anything, that will help you to better cope with the many anxieties and frustrations of living, especially in difficult economic and social times like these. If it's a hobby, volunteering, walking around one's neighbourhood or a local park, getting out and socialising with the few friends you have and feel close to, doing something on-line, making some sort of artwork, etc, it's still far better than deciding to pick up a weapon and do damage to others and oneself. You may feel pressed up against the wall with no other options but to make like a hero out of any type of drama or "action" film you could care to name, but, unlike most of the protagonists of such dramas and films, your efforts will lead only to your doom, in one way or another, and the deaths or injury of others around you. Then, there will come, as they always do after incidents of this kind, the inevitable questions about why and how you did it directed at your friends and family, as well as the recriminations, blame and desire for revenge upon them by some of the victims' family, friends and members of the general public, and they will be left to cope with those, as well as the guilt, shame, anger and loss at you and your deeds by your own family to deal with.

You may think that you are taking a heroic stand against a world that neither understands nor cares about you, and you may well be right on those latter two points. But, ultimately, the stand is neither heroic, nor does it accomplish much of anything, besides more needless death and misery, including your own, nor, given the fast-moving nature of current news cycles, will it be remembered for long by most members of the general public, except as only one in a very long list of similar crimes. For your family and whatever friends you have, as well as your victims, their family and friends, and the law enforcement personnel and medcal personnel called upon to deal with the results of your deeds, those memories will be long and bitter ones indeed.

You'll have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind, and gained nothing, except anger, hatred, brief infamy, and either death or worse suffering than you'd before in prison or a mental facility, and for far longer.

You may say that am pissing in the wind by addressing these suggestions to you. Maybe so, but so's picking up a weapon and going at one's neighbours, because, in the end, you are merely one person with a relatively tiny amount of weaponry and ammunition going against forces that have more people, weapons and ammunition, and, generally speaking, more training and experience in using them than you. If you are that desperate and foolish enough to try, you will find out just how highly the odds against you succeeding are stacked, and I doubt you'll enjoy paying the price that comes with that.

That, too, is pissing in the wind, only with much, much worse results than my doing so here.

There are no easy, ready-made answers to the problems that you're facing, any more than there are to many of the problems that we are collectively facing, whether as members of one human group or another, or as a species right now. Many of these problems are of long-standing, duration and complexity, and will require a lot of time, resources and trouble to fix, and, even then, some mayn't be fixed, at least entirely, to everyone's satisfaction.

No problem ever is, really.

There are solutions that please the majority of people, but never everyone. How could they???

There are nearly seven billion people on this planet right now, as far as I understand it, each of them with their own wants, needs, desires, backgrounds and opinions.
Humans are often contradictory and contrary beasts that can be as stubborn as a Missouri mule when they want to be, and set in their respective ways.

Add on to that the fact that we humans have been playing the civilisation game for only around nearly 10,000 years of our approximately 1 million year existence on this planet, which is a relatively small amount of time to be doing that, and one can see that, while we've come a long, long ways, especially organisationally and technologically, we've a long ways to go, especially in reconciling the instinctive, animal parts of who and what we are with the needs and demands of living together in large groups.

There is no, in my opinion, one-size-fits-all approach to the many problems of living together in socially, economically, politically and ethnically complex societies like the ones we've at present. There are many of those out there, whether on the Left, Right and Centre, who make such claims, but, as has been seen over and over again throughout human history, while some of the various systems advocated have been better at solving some of these problems, others haven't, and some have only made them far worse.

Of course, there's always the option of doing nothing, or trying to push one's society and culture back into a nostalgic, "better", social order. but the prices of doing those are, in my opinion, far higher than actually trying to address the problems at hand, like this one, and making the effort to solve them. The prices and results of doing that mayn't always be worth the costs, but they are still worth more than the former two options.

It has been nearly four hours since I began this essay, and, while am cynical about the number of people who will actually read this essay now, or at any time in the future, and find it to be of any real valute, the time and effort expended here is still worth it, even if only in the respect of my finding some way of constructively dealing with many of the feelings I've about my own life and the world around me, and possibly, in turn, being of some benefit and value to others, even if just by letting them know that they aren't alone out there in how, what and why they're feeling the way they do.

As for my own life, well, that is something that will have to take on, one day and one bit of effort, at a time. It mayn't work out at all the way I'd like it to be, but that's part of the chance that I have to take, and it's a far better go than simply shrugging my shoulders and letting my frustrations and anxieties eat me alive, or ending up doing something entirely foolish and harmful to myself and others. Am no saint, not by a long shot. Am just another human being, like the rest of you out there, with my own wants, needs and aspirations. Some of these may be fulfilled, and others not. Only time and effort will tell.

In the meantime, Here Endeth The Lesson and Be Seeing You.

Odds, Ends, Sods And Such(Part Six)

2009-03-29T15:43:00.001-07:00

These are hard times, and, for the foreseeable future, they will get even harder before substantial improvements are made, if

at all.

In the meantime, I think that one thing that even someone as poor and obscure as myself can do, is to keep tracks of what's

going on in the world, using as wide a variety of sources as possible, whether domestic, foreign, etc, and across as much of

the ideological spectrum as possible, too.

It also means reading articles, listening to or watching on-line or off-line radio broadcasts, videos and streaming media, as

carefully, attentively and sceptically as one would read a newspaper article, magazine story or book.

It means talking with others, both off-line and on-line and getting their takes on such issues.

It means using one's own background and experiences to evaluate, analyse, and decide for oneself whose takes on a given issue

or set of issues comes closest to the truth of the matter under discussion.

Finally, it means not succumbing to the understandable urge to either panic, run riot or give up and settle into a fatalistic

apathy out of despair over the fate of the planet, one's country, or oneself. It's no sin to be uncertain and afraid,

especially when confronted by a stream of seemingly unending bad news.

It can be fatal, and often needlessly so, to do those, however.

Be aware, both of what's going on in the world, but also of what's going on in oneself. Think, question, analyse, and be

prepared to wrong, when need be.

Also, try to keep as much of a sense of logic, proportion and humour as best one can. They may not help all the time, but

they are certainly better to succumbing to fear and panic and engaging in the kinds of foolish behaviours that, sometimes,

end up in mass murder, if not genocide.

I say this as much to myself as to you out there, because there are days when I can succumb to those emotions too. All of us

can. The trick is not to let them sweep everything else in oneself away, including one's humanity.

Here Endeth The Lesson, and Be Seeing You.

Odds, Ends, Sods And Such(Part Five)

2009-03-29T15:42:00.001-07:00

Conbined with the rise of various forms of alternative media, especially on-line news groups like the various Indy Media

outlets, which had been originally formed to cover the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999, but which came into their own during the

Bush Administration, as well as, on the Right, sites like Free Republic.com, and one can see where a considerable variety of

information became available to many Americans who'd not access to such information and view-points before.

But, perhaps the biggest problem with such open-source media is that, and yes, at least with the Indy Media outlets, there

were and are rules against the posting of spam, commercial messages, racist and other forms of hate speech, and so on, the

information posted on many of these sites is only as good as the source posting it.

As much as I can often detest the old form of journalism, with its many editors, sub-editors, and so on, one advantage to

that was, and remains, the existence of an editorial process, with its many editors, sub-editors, and even fact checkers, to

question and verify the veracity, or not, of information given out by any source.

This isn't generally a feature of many on-line, open-source, news outlets, especially many blogs, which tend to be one-man

bands operated on a shoe-string(am writing this from my own experience alone, and could well be wrong, especially when it

comes to group blogs), and it's pretty easy for factual errors, rumours, half-truths and lies to slip by, depending on the

personal preferences and ideological bents of the blog or other on-line media outlet poster.

Thus, at least to me, it doesn't come as an incredible surprise that a lot of bad, or at least incomplete, information gets

out onto the 'Net, and into people's heads, and with an ease and speed that makes even television news outlets look like 18th

Century newspapers by comparison.

It also means that, in turn, a lot of people, especially those who are already, and for good reason, freaked out by the

current world economic situation, the political and social situations in many parts of the world, and climate change, among

other factors, are going to look to any solutions, no matter how dubious in execution or outcome they might be, that promise

to end these problems and provide a meaningful, satisfactory existence for themselves and theirs.

These people aren't puppets, being strung along by cynical, evil types, though my guess is that some of those providing some

of this information and proposed solutions might be, but who have been buffeted over the years by a sea of propaganda of

various kinds and from various sides, as have we all, and who are trying to make the best possible choices in what appears to

be a pretty small and dismal range of them.

Odds, Ends, Sods And Such(Part Four)

2009-03-29T15:40:00.000-07:00

The panic-driven aftermath of 11th September, 2001, is perhaps the best and most immediate example I can think of it

illustrate this point.

Within six months of the attacks on Washington D.C. and New York City, the US government, with the willing, if not entirely

knowledgable, consent of much of the US public, had passed the Patriot Act, created the Department of Homeland Security, and

had gone into Afghanistan to smash Al-Qaida and its Taliban hosts. Along the way, especially in the first days and weeks

after the attacks, some American Muslims were attacked, and even some non-Muslims who appeared to be so, like the unfortunate

Phoenix Arizona gas station owner, who was a Sikh, who was murdered only a few days after those events by a man who called

himself, "a damn American", when arrested by police for his crime.

Many others were detained, some for quite lengthy periods, and, following former Vice-President Dick Cheney's cue about the

US "going over to the dark side", a network of secret prisons and arrangements with other nations, like Egypt, Jordan and

even Syria, in which detainees were flown from the US and other parts of the world, placed in prisons in those countries and

tortured.

All of this is now well known, as well as the use of the residual fear left from 9/11's aftermath by the Bush Administration

and the Republican Party to essentially either stifle debate, or, at the very least, restrict it to certain "safe"

parameters, both inside and outside of the governing classes, push through what would become the expensive, gruesome

misadventure known as the Iraq War, and begin chipping away at constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms in the name of

national security.

The Bush Administration and the GOP would go on to use this fear to win two key elections, the Congressional one of 2002 and

the Presidential one of 2004, and it wouldn't be, at least in my opinion, until the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the

dismal performance, on all levels of government, but especially the Federal government, in September, 2005, that much of that

fear which had many Americans in its thrall, would start wearing off.

By that time, and in the intervening three-plus years until the November 2008 Presidential elections, the deteriorating

conditions inside Iraq, especially in 2006 and 2007, combined with the beginnings of the sub-prime crisis that would

eventually result in the current economic mess we are in now, further eroded whatever remaining credibility the Bush

Administration and its supporters had with many members of the American general public.

Try as they might, neither the Administration, the GOP, nor its political and media allies could maintain the kind of fear

generated by the 9/11 attacks, at least outside of much of their political bases, to retain control over Congress, which they

lost in 2006, nor the Presidency. By that time, too much of what the Bush Administration and its supporters had said had

turned out to either half-truths at best, or outright lies at worst, and the McCain-Palin campaign simply couldn't overcome

the disgust and revulsion felt by many Americans at those half-truths and lies.

But, certainly it wasn't just the Bush Administration and the Republican Party who fell down on the job. Much of the

mainstream media, particularly in the first three or so years after the 9/11 attacks, failed to adequately provide the kind

of investigative journalism that the aftermath of those attacks, as well the US government's policies and practises, and

especially the build-up to the Iraq War, demanded, but didn't really get, from the majority of the US mass media.

There are many factors behind this, media consolidations, fear of looking "un-patriotic"(a fear which also paralysed, or at

least disabled, many Democrats as well), shrinking budgets for foreign news desks, etc.

But, even when one takes these factors into account, the fact remains that, when the American and world public needed solid,

truthful, information the most, much of the US mass media stood down.

Odds, Ends, Sods And Such(Part Three)

2009-03-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

Some would say that that's the exclusive province of the Left, to which I say "Banana Oil".

The Nazis, first with the German and Austrian Jewish communities, and then, during World War Two, engaged in one of the

biggest, if not the biggest, mass robberies seen in European, if not world, history, in which whole countries' lands, labour,

and other resources were grabbed wholesale and used to enrich Germany, and especially the German elite. In turn, those

Europeans who collaborated with the Nazis found, at least for a short time, that their masters' "Aryanisation" policies could

be quite profitable, even if not as profitable for them as the good German boys and girls above them.

That's just one example of such large-scale larceny in world history, and, anyway, is kinda beside the point, except to maybe

illustrate another, and that's any dirty deed, whether theft, murder, whatever, can be done and even glorified, given the

right ideological justification, and it doesn't matter from which part of the political spectrum, nationality, race,or

wherever else it comes.

The history of the Americas shows that even ostensibly liberal democracies, like the US, Canada, Argentina and a number of

others, can and have engaged in campaigns of mass murder, rape and theft(just ask any member of the various Amerindian tribes

found in the American Hemisphere about that), just as conservative, or, much more rarely, if only because there have been so

few of 'em, left-wing dictatorships have. Even the various Amerindian groups, especially large-scale civilisations like the

Mexica(or Aztecs, if you prefer)and the Inca engaged in such practises for religious reasons, among others.

The principles at work here are psychological, at least partially so, in that one has to either feel hard done by another,

or, from the other end, feels that one's neighbour's so utterly and irredeemably inferior to oneself, family and friends,

hard-pressed, which is as much a matter of perception as fact, and that the course in which one engages is the only sound,

"logical" and "just" one available that coshing one's neighbour's head in becomes, at least in theory, the best and easiest

one at hand.

God knows, I've struggled with that part of myself in the past, and do so, from time to time, even now. It's the meanest,

most ungenerous part of ourselves, rooted in our basic survival instincts and biological needs, and which come out, in

generally more elaborate forms, in human beings whenever they are, or at least feel, pressed up against the wall.

These are uncertain times, to grossly understate it, and people, like any other variety of animal, can and will respond to

uncertainity with fear, and, depending on the individual, even panic, in one form or another.

Fear and panic, like any emotion, can be useful survival tools for getting oneself or one's group out of a dangerous

situation.

But, particularly when used by politicians, media figures and outlets, and even so-called ordinary people, it can make an

already bad situation far worse than it is.

Odds, Ends, Sods And Such(Part Two)

2009-03-26T06:35:00.000-07:00

As I see it, the on-going world economic crisis, at least for most of the world, as India and Iran, for reasons of their own, haven't been affected as badly as many Western and non-Western nations, hasn't yet been fulled revealed in its scope and extent. But,from what has been seen thus far, it's broad, deep and wide-ranging in its extent and reach, and won't be solved easily nor quickly, regardless of the various nostrums, suggestions, commands and threats made by politicians, pundits, economists, and so-called ordinary people from all portions of the political spectrum across the globe.

This, of course, has most people, except for perhaps the professional purveyors of apocalypse, running anxiously, if not straight-up scared, and am no exception, as, being on Social Security Disability and Supplemental Security Income, with few other resources, I feel particularly vulnerable. After all, one of the first things that politicians, especially right-wing ones, can and will call for is a thorough purge, if not out-right abolition of, welfare and other social support programmes for the poor and working class.

Have lived with the anxiety of having my benefits either greatly reduced or entirely cut off since the 1994 Congressional election and the resulting Republican Congressional majority that lasted until the 2006 Congressional elections. Thank God that my anxieties didn't come to pass, but don't know either way if this time 'round, they won't, in some form or another.

But, these anxieties are nothing compared to those who've either lost huge chunks of cash thanks to the economic policies and practises that resulted in this crisis, or those either in the workforce or who were only marginally so, who now have lost their positions and are looking at taking posts that are part-time at best and poorly paid enough that it becomes either difficult or impossible to have more than the barest standard of living at all. This is particularly true for those out there who've families with children to support.

I could go into a long spiel about how this is the end result of economic, social and tax policies that have generally favoured the upper and upper middle classes at the expense of the lower middle class, working class and poor over the past thirty plus years, the de-industrialisation of much of the American economy, which, together with the policies just mentioned, has resulted in a tremendous growth of social inequality in the US in that time, the financially, politically and socially draining effects of fighting two medium sized wars, as well as engaging in the various operations and interventions abroad that characterise the "War On Terror", and financial sector policies and practises that resulted in large segments of the American people using credit cards and home equity to cover gaping holes in their weekly and monthly budgets that their incomes couldn't and wouldn't cover.

In fact, just did that with that whopper of a sentence, which would make any good newspaper or magazine editor run screaming with horror into the night. But, either way, while it's good to know the various causes of our present dilemma, and who's responsible for it, knowing these isn't, by itself, going to fix the problems nor provide practical solutions that benefit, or least, least hurt, the vast majority of people in the US and internationally, especially the poorest and most vulnerable.

Even if every banker, hedge fund manager, stockbroker, payday loan store operator and other financial service provider in the world were dragged out into their respective town squares, hanged by the neck until they were dead, dead, dead, and Good Riddance(Ptui!!), their families run out of town on a rail, and their homes burnt down to the ground, these problems wouldn't go away. Whether we like it or not, this is the situation with which we're stuck, and are going to be for some time to come.

Cold comfort, in fact, no damn comfort whatsoever, I know. But, here we are.

So, it's understandable that a lot of people, some uneducated, others only semi-educated, and a number of educated ones, reach out to theories and solutions that sound great, at least theoretically, and to the prospects of getting those responsible, or likelier, those people whom they already despise who are close to hand(a principle that any schoolyard bully instinctively understands-if one can't get the target one wants, the most convenient will do in a pinch), and their possessions.(continued in Part Three)

Odds, Ends, Sods And Such(Part One)

2009-03-26T06:32:00.001-07:00

Well, time for the occasional bit of psycho-sociological spew that I call an essay.

Have been busy noodling around on the 'Net, or at least in certain small corners thereof, after getting my new computer, courtesy of my loving family, back in mid-February, and, considering that I don't get out much, nor pay any attention at all to off-line media anymore, it has become an extremely important part of my life.

So, much of what you will see here are reactions to bits, bobs, odds and sods that have seen on-line in that time, and whatever limited and poor analysis that have made of both them and myself.

One of the most disturbing trends that have seen, though, mind you, it's been a sort of underlying thread throughout much of the culture, at least on-line, is all the talk of conspiracy theories, revolution, the imminent end of the world, or at least of civilisation as we know it.

Much of this, especially from the Left, is an outgrowth of the Bush Administration years, although, depending on which segment of the American and international Left one's discussing, it's been going on, in one form or another, since the 1870s. From the Right, which was stunned by the repudiation of its ideas and policies in the recent US Presidential elections, many of the conspiracy theories and revolutionary rhetoric that have since appeared are of considerably more recent vintage, mainly dating back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, though some wrinkles in it, like the New World Order hobby-horse, are even newer, dating only from 1991.

The point is that these theories and rhetoric neither popped out of someone's head fully-formed just within the last four months, nor, thus far, have they borne much in the way of real results.

Yes, there have been the occasional out-breaks of left- and right-wing terrorism in the US, whether the Weather Underground and Symbionese Liberation Army of the 1970s from segments of the American far Left, or the deadlier and more effective, at least temporarily, outbreaks from US Right groups like the Order and Posse Comitatus in the 1980s, or the Aryan Republican Army, which launched a number of bank robberies in the lower Midwest in the mid-1990s, and which may have had at least a tangential connection with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the perpetrators of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, as well as the militia movement of the 1990s.

But, ultimately, these groups were either suppressed, disbanded, or found themselves pretty much as they were when they started out, rather unimportant and marginal groups in American politics.

So, what is it that makes the re-emergence of these ideas, rhetoric and groups worrying to me???

I think it has as much to do with the current state of US and international politics and culture, the current economic situation, and my own situation, as anything else.

Get The Rope(poem)

2009-03-12T04:14:00.000-07:00

“Get the rope” said one fella to another in a small town one fine day./

So, the other got the rope, while the first got some friends./

And they all went and got some poor bastard, whom they'd never liked,/

pulled him out of his house, and dragged 'im down to a nice, tall tree./

On the way, they cuffed, punched an' kicked 'im good,/

callin' 'im and his mother every name in the book an' more./

He plead for his life, but weren't nobody listenin', 'cos he was just a son of a bitch,/

whom nobody liked./

So, they told 'im to shut up,/

an' shut his God-Damn mouth with a couple of shots,/

upside his head./

When they got to the tree, they asked 'im if he'd anything to say,/

but, when the fool opened his mouth, they smacked it shut,/

an' told 'im he was gonna die like a God-Damned dog./

So, up went the rope, onto the strongest branch of the tree./

'Round his neck went the noose, which they pulled good and tight./

On a box somebody brought, went his feet, 'tho' they wouldn't be there long./

Then, after sentence was pronounced, and finished with, “And may God have mercy on your soul, you sonuvabitch!!!!”,/

the box was kicked away./

Dunno how long it took 'im to die,/

maybe 15 minutes, maybe a half-hour./

Don't matter, y'see./

Same goes fer whether he was guilty or not./

Don't matter the crime nor the reason,/

'cos nobody liked 'im, and nobody missed 'im,/

so they hung 'im, an' that's that./

But, that was years ago,/

an' all of us're in the bone-yard, now./

Layin' in the ground,/

long-past worm food, now./

Nobody knows,/

nobody cares,/

'bout the fella,/

an' what we did,/

so long ago./

We're in the ground,/

an' so's he,/

an', from this view,/

seems to me,/

we weren't any better/

than the poor dumb son of a bitch/

we put in the damn ground./

We all stank,/

we all rotted,/

same as him./

We thought we were better,/

maybe we were./

But, down here, don't matter a bit,/

'cos we're dead./

That's what matters now./

The rest, I'll leave you to decide.

Playing The Fiddle(action figure story)

2009-02-26T02:38:00.000-08:00

The noon sun shone high above the grassy plain along which the party of about a dozen or so figures were moving northwards on the cold, early March day of 2009.

At its head was the Lieutenant, a beaten-up,vintage blond Eagle-Eyed Action Man,who wore an ill-matched assortment of military and civilian figure and doll clothes of various makes,marks and vintages, and strode along with a determined,if weary,air.

About half a foot or so behind him on his right were the members of his squad,an assorted mix of action figures of various types, Modern GI Joes, Modern Action Men, 21st Century SSAMS and one or two off-brand figures, all dressed, like the Lieutenant, in bits and bobs of military and civilian kit with mis-matching accessories, and carrying a variety of firearms, ranging from old GI Joe M-1 Garands with the barrel tips broken off to knock-off versions of GI Joe and other brand name M-16s, and even a vintage Ken doll or Big Jim shot-gun or two.

At the same distance directly behind the Lieutenant, trudged a line of half-a-dozen figures of various sorts,all tightly bound together with string tied around their wrists. They were prisoners, the last survivors of the Commune of Harmonia, a small village republic of farmers,artisans and scholars that had been one of the many settlements that had once flourished in the northwestern corner of Dystopia, or, as it had been known before the two major parts of the world's largest action figure and doll collection,Centralia and Pacifica, split apart in April, 2002, Occidentalia.

From that time on,Occidentalia,along with its eastern neighbour,Orientalia,fell into semi-organised chaos,with action figure communities of various sizes going at each other over resources, territory, ideology, religion and racial, ethnic and brand-name bigotries.

Some,like the People's Republic of Oceania, patterned after its counter-part in Orwell's 1984, rose to greatness before the April, 2007,Centralian-Pacifican War, during which the Oceanians fought alongside the Centralians and lost.

Most Dystopian territories, like Harmonia, and the Bailiwick of New Wessex,in whose army of three dozen figures the Lieutenant was an officer,were small,even tiny,village states of no more than a few dozen inhabitants at most,and had,since the Great Dissolution,as the Centralian-Pacifican split of 2002 was known,alternately traded and fought with each other as relations between them warranted.

For most of that time, the wars between them,and their other neighbours,had been characterised by a low level of violence because of their small populations,and the corresponding horror of casualties that even beings like action figures,capable of being revived a week or so after death, had.

But, after the Centralian-Pacifican War of '07, all that changed, as mercenaries, fugitives, criminals, fortune-seekers and refugees, mainly Centralians, whose government dissolved in the wake of defeat, but Pacificans,too, poured into both halves of Dystopia, bringing with them new beliefs, manners and ways, including a ruthlessness in waging war that most Dystopians hadn't before experienced. Combined with increased anxiety and competition over territory and resources, it was enough to break all of the previous restraints on violence,and so they were.

Villages were now routinely pillaged and burnt to the ground,with all living things in them either killed or enslaved, and a new slang term, “Playing the Fiddle”, meaning cutting the throats of unfortunate captives, usually after a raid or battle,came into use in the various local languages.

It was that very task to which the Lieutenant and his squad were leading their captives,as they would have been led, had their respective fortunes been reversed.

The Lieutenant squinted hard into the immediate distance to find the right spot for the execution ground, while protecting his eyes against the harsh late winter sunlight and wind.

He fumbled in his upper right-hand jacket pocket, pulled out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth.,next reaching into his right-hand trouser pocket and producing a lighter from it. The Lieutenant stopped for several seconds,cupping his hands to protect its tiny flame from the wind whipping around him,as both soldiers and prisoners behind him simultaneously and wordlessly halted .

He drew hard on the cigarette,sucking the smoke into his chest cavity, then started walking forward again,looking for just the perfect spot to finish the job assigned him and his men.

The Lieutenant took another puff, while thinking of nothing at all,a state he found becoming more and more common with him as he aged. There were times when, in a state of repose, he would think back to when he was first de-boxed, “Was it thirty or thirty-one years ago???,” the Lieutenant would wonder, and then he would ask himself, as he always did,“Where did the time go???!!!”.

Gone, the time and the events in his life had, going first from one collection to another, ending up in a charity shop, being bought by a collector, who, after a while, had sold him on Ebay to an American acting as a buyer for the organics of whose collection which he was now a part, and ending up in New Wessex just a little before the Great Dissolution.

From there, it had been one struggle after another to keep going, with one,or was it two?, wives, both dead now, a girl-friend or two after that, and all the while,working in his small shoe shop, when not out on operations in the field.

All of that had been chopped and mashed up,blended, and fused in his head long ago,and there were days when he found himself unsure of where he was,when it was,and even what his own name was. That, and the Lieutenant found himself increasingly tired, it seemed to him,of everything and everyone, even himself.

He felt his joints and elastic loosening every day, two of the fingers on his right gripping hand were already gone, and a third looked about ready to go as well, his fuzzy hair was patchily spaced on his head, and it seemed about the right time for him to finally lie down one sunny afternoon, go to sleep and not wake up ever again. At least, not as the same figure .

So, a bit of mental napping every so often relieved him, just so long as the Lieutenant could be mentally sharp and focused when he needed to be.

It was while engulfed in that mental fog,eagle eyes moving back and forth, right and left,that the Lieutenant found the perfect killing ground,a flat semi-grass-covered patch of a ground about a foot or so away from him on his left.

He wordlessly looked over in the direction where his sergeant, a 21st Century Soviet Spetsnaz sniper named Dzerzhinsky was heading the squad file, called out, “Sarn't” to the latter, and pointed at the patch.

Dzerzhinsky nodded affirmatively at the Lieutenant, called the squad to turn left, and, leading the right half of the crescent-shaped formation that body took to herd the prisoners to their destination, briskly strode over to where the Lieutenant stood.

Practically nothing was said by anyone,aside from some commands from the sergeant to the prisoners to turn and hurry up, as the group went along.

The Lieutenant simply stood and watched as Dzerzhinsky and two soldiers led and herded the prisoners into a line not more than half a foot in front of him and the squad, the remainder of which formed into a file directly across from where the prisoners stood.

No thoughts, or at least any conscious ones, passed through his head, as he watched the process unfold. He took another drag from his cigarette, inhaling, then, a few seconds later, exhaling its smoke, before extinguishing it and replacing it in his right trouser pocket, as the sergeant finished up his work and began walking over to his superior. Every bit of the process went just like clockwork,, just as it had many times before,and probably would if,or more likely when, their own time to be taken and shot came, the Lieutenant mused to himself.

Dzerzhinsky approached him and said, “Ready when you are, Sir,” and stood ready to receive his officer's reply.

The Lieutenant coughed, telling himself he'd have to give up smoking very soon, and told his junior, “Right. Take your place, Sergeant.”

Dzerzhinsky's reply was a terse “Sir”, then he headed over to where the squad was, and took his place on its extreme right, awaiting, like the rest of his mates, the Lieutenant's next order.

The Lieutenant turned his head in the prisoners' direction, looking them over, which he'd not done before, and scanned their faces from left to right. The expressions he saw on the first three were, or at least seemed to be, blank,though, he thought,one could never really tell what was going on in anyone's mind just by reading what was on his face, and the expression on the fourth prisoner's face was one of resignation, as if he was simply wanting them to get on with the whole dreary procedure.

The last two prisoners' faces, however, interested him most.

The fifth prisoner, a Sideshow Toys Get Smart Chief, seemed to be wavering between his figure type's typical sardonic weariness, disbelief at the situation he was in, a possible urge to beg for his life, and stoical acceptance of what was coming, more or less simultaneously. Most amazing, the Lieutenant thought.

The last prisoner, a blonde Fashion Fever Barbie who was the only woman in either group, was in angry, defiant shock, and hurled a stream of bitter invective at her executioners, describing them, their makers, and their parents in a blend of obscenity and blasphemy that would have done credit to a drunken Dutch sailor on a Saturday-night spree who just been nabbed by the cops.

The Lieutenant listened to her outpourings for what was probably 10 or 15 seconds, but which must have seemed much longer to everyone present, admiring her courage and spirit, if not her sense, before looking away from her and her companions, and tuning out her insults.

After all, he thought, best to get the job done and over with, especially as the wind was getting colder and was biting right through his clothes.

The Lieutenant placed his hand in his left trouser pocket, fumbling around for the sheet of paper with the ritual statement that was read to the condemned on such occasions, then decided to dispense with it entirely and finish this before he and his squad all turned into blocks of ice.

He turned his head toward the squad, and called it to attention. It did so,waiting for the order to make itself ready to come out of his mouth. That followed directly, accompanied by the sound of gun safeties clicking off.

Next, came the order for the squad to aim its weapons at the prisoners, which was carried out as soon as the squad heard it.

The only sounds that could be heard as the squad aimed its weapons were the wind starting to blow gustily across the plain and the woman's insults, nothing more, so it seemed to the Lieutenant.

Finally, after about a second or two's delay, he gave the order to fire, and the wind and the woman's voice, along with any other sounds there might have been, were drowned out by the rifle pops combined with the blasts from the squad's two shot-guns, that made up a short-lived, communal roar of weaponry.

The prisoners were hurled backwards by the impact of the squad's bullets, hit the ground in a variety of awkward positions, and stayed where they fell, the string binding their wrists being the only thing keeping them together in death, as it had in the last minutes of their lives.

Now, the only sound remaining was the wind, blowing hard, followed by a cigarette cough from the Lieutenant.

He'd been looking off into the distance during the execution, regarding neither his squad nor the prisoners. But, since the main part of the show was finished, the Lieutenant again gazed in the latter's direction, looking for breathing or any other signs of life coming from any of them. There wasn't, as far as he could tell, but standard procedure called for a head shot for each victim to make absolutely sure, and he wasn't about to deviate from it this time, just as he hadn't in the past.

So, the Lieutenant strolled over to where the prisoners lay, carefully inspecting them for life signs yet again as he did so, saw none, while pulling his .45 calibre self-loading pistol from the holster on his web belt's right side, taking its safety off, and pulling back its hammer, cocking it to fire.

He first walked over to where the woman lay on her back, face-up, her final expression one of fear and anger now giving way to dead nothingness, aimed his pistol and fired a shot directly into her forehead.

After that, he made his way down the row of prisoners, some of whom, like the woman, were laying face-upwards, while others were either face-down or had their heads turned to one side or another, and fired a single shot each into their heads.
When he finished with his part of the execution, the Lieutenant gave an unthinking sigh, replaced his pistol into its holster, and turned away for the last time from his victims. There was nothing more that he could either say or do about them or their condition, anyway.

He called out to Dzerzhinsky to have two men come up and untie the prisoners' wrists, which was quickly carried out, while the Lieutenant made his way to the squad.

Lives were cheap and plentiful in this part of the world, but not string.

Ordinarily, there would have been a vehicle, or at least a horse or donkey or two, which would have carried the prisoners' corpses back to New Wessex for cleaning, and, perhaps, either revival or sale to one of the various wandering body dealers, colloquially known as “Scavengers”, “Vultures” or “Buzzards”, who traded in such items, as well as weapons, clothing and other accessories left behind after battles, all over Dystopia.

But, there had been too many of their own people killed and wounded while taking Harmonia, and none could be spared to transport the bodies of slain prisoners.

So, they would be left where they fell, and if someone picked them, fine. If not, they would be left to the mercies of the weather and whatever animals, figure or organic, that came upon them, and that was that, the Lieutenant thought as he passed down the squad's line after complimenting them on their work.

He walked over to the squad's far left, taking the head of the line it would make as it headed for the ruins of Harmonia, where they would meet up with whatever remaining members of their army stationed there after the looting and transport of whatever was taken, along with their dead and wounded, finished.

The Lieutenant heard, then saw Dzerzhinsky as he came up and told him that everyone was back in line and ready to go. He replied, “Good,” to that statement, and told the sergeant to order the squad to move out, staring straight ahead towards the wisps of black smoke going up into the sky that marked Harmonia's ruins and their penultimate destination before shoving off home.

Dzerzhinsky thanked him, saluted, looked back at the waiting soldiers, called out, “Left face,” then gave the order to “Forward, march,” while making his way to the squad's rear, where he took up his place.

The Lieutenant took two steps forward, with the rest of the squad following behind, and the long walk home for them began, leaving behind the prisoners who would most likely never take such a walk ever again.

There was no singing, chatter or any other sort of noise coming from the squad as it marched, only he steps of the men as they walked away, and the sound of the March wind blowing as it had for millions of years before.

Two weeks after the execution, New Wessex, like Harmonia, was taken, sacked and burnt, and its inhabitants, the Lieutenant and Dzerzhinsky included, either killed in battle or killed afterwards.

By the time a Centralian peacekeeping force, heading east to central Occidentalia to help the unfortunate survivors of a massive uprising and war that had devastated that part of the Dystopian
lands, passed through the region where Harmonia, New Wessex and their neighbours had been at the end of March, 2009, there were only ruins and a very few frightened and starving survivors, who fled from the very sight of the force's vehicles, to be found.

Everyone and everything else were either dead or long since gone, leaving only ruins, ghosts, the grass and the wind.

My Take On The Current Israeli-Hamas Fighting

2008-12-30T07:26:00.000-08:00

Posted this as a reply to a topic related to the current fighting between Israel and Hamas on the IPeace group on the Ning social network this morning.

The opinions below are entirely my own, and are my responsibility, especially in whatever errors of fact and judgment found therein.

Be seeing you.

Personally, haven't followed this story much, but, from have followed of it, am disgusted with the levels of cynicism on both Hamas' and the Olmert government's parts.

It seems to me that neither side has ever shown much more than a token rhetorical commitment to having a cease-fire, let alone peace, between the two, and that both were looking for an excuse, any excuse, to re-start hostilities at the earliest possible date.

Add on to that, the rhetoric and actions of various interested outside parties like the US, Iran and Syria, none of which have any real interest, so it would seem, in finding any real solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, for ideological and strategic reasons of their own.

There are also other non-state groups and individuals, like Hizbollah in Lebanon, Al-Qaida, AIPAC and various Christian fundamentalists in the US, who have added their rhetorical weights behind either Hamas or the Olmert goverment in Israel, and who would also love seeing this conflict widen and deepen to achieve their respective ideals and goals.

All of these parties are playing a cynical game, with their own publics and the world public at large, and Israeli and Palestinian civilians are paying the price for their leaders', and those of the various states and groups that have mentioned here, willingness to bomb, bomb, bomb each other to bits, and send up howls of righteous indignation, while secretly saying to themselves and their closest followers, "Another one dead. Good."

This is far from the first time that such a game has been played, especially in the Middle East, and, unfortunately, it won't be the last.

These parties and their allies are all too happy to play in each other's blood, so long as the blood in which they play doesn't belong to anyone to whom they are close, and will continue to do it for as long as they see some sort of benefit and reward.

Had I the power and resources to carry this out, I would isolate these parties completely. No diplomatic relations, no money, no trade, and not even humanitarian assistance would go to them. Communications of all sorts between them and the outside world would be entirely cut off, and they would be left to fester and rot in their own filth and misery.

For those Israelis, Palestinians, Syrians and Iranians who wished to leave, I would, in conjunction with other members of the international community, ensure that provisions were made by the international community to resettle those people in various countries.

This isolation would continue until the various parties involved agreed to an immediate and binding cease-fire, immediately followed by a massive demobilisation of their regular and paramilitary armed forces, and the beginning of a UN-supervised disarmament of these parties' armed forces, including their various police forces, and the simultaneous immediate commencement between these parties and their backers, as well as their immediate neighbours, like Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, of talks aimed at a long-term settlement of the various problems between them.

No member of the various delegations would be permitted to stall or walk out of these negotiations, and those who tried would be immediately arrested and detained until they returned to the talks and ceased engaging in obstructive behaviour.

As for their leaders and supporters back home, the various sanctions placed upon them would continue for as long as they continued to indulge themselves in rhetoric and actions designed to further worsen the crisis, and to obstruct any efforts at making a lasting peace agreement.

If they kept on indulging themselves, the more and tougher the sanctions would become, and the more suffering they would have to endure.

As for their supporters abroad, the international community would have to take swift and decisive action. They wouldn't be allowed to send money nor goods to the various parties, either directly or through third countries, and, as for going to enlist in the various parties' armed forces, they would, as much as possibly could, be stopped and arrested wherever they were, and detained until the crisis had passed.

As for those providing rhetorical support, depending on the level and type of rhetoric used, criminal and civil charges would be placed against those advocating violent actions in either Israel, Palestine, or in any other country. At the very least, those people would be looking at long periods of time spent in court and severe financial penalties, if not gaol or prison time.

I realise that what am proposing here is both extremely harsh and, because of the grand scale involved, ultimately impractical and destined to failure, precisely because so many people and resources would have to be mobilised to carry it off successfully.

However, at the very least, some form of sanctions against both Hamas and Israel may be needed to get them to stop fighting, if not to the negotiation table.

Ultimately, the international community's goal should be, in my opinion, to make a long-lasting peace between the Israelis, Palestinians and their neighbours based on what will benefit the vast majority of people in their respective societies, and that will ensure the most beneficial use and sharing of resources between them.

This isn't, and won't be, an easy or short process to undergo. But, I believe it is a necessary one if the international community at all levels wants to see an end to the fighting between Israel and its Arab enemies.

But, so long as the Israeli government and Hamas are allowed to continue attacking each other's peoples, and little or nothing is done, outside of rhetorical protests, the cycle of cynical game-playing and bloodshed between them will continue.

Finally, to the various partisans of the Israeli and Palestinian sides outside of Israel and Palestine, I say this;if you must continue your rhetorical and other forms of support for your sides' various policies and actions, I would remind you that you are outsiders in this struggle, and, since you don't live in the region, this isn't your fight at all.

Whatever your motivations and ideas behind your rhetoric and actions are, they only worsen an already horrid situation and contribute nothing positive whatsoever to its ending.

If you feel you must go to either Israel or Palestine, enlist in their armed forces and fight, I will not encourage you to do so. But, at least, you'd be putting your beliefs into action, and taking a direct share and risk in doing so.

If not, then please, please, don't make the situation any worse than it already is, by indulging yourselves in inflammatory rhetoric and actions designed to further encourage the Israeli government's or Hamas' leaders in their barbaric policies, rhetoric and actions.

It's not your fight, and never was.

Instead, I would suggest that you, along with others, start putting sufficient pressure on your own governments to ensure that they either pressure the Israeli government and Hamas to immediately stop fighting, or, at the very least, firmly and totally stay out of the affair, and not supply anything, whether money, arms or other goods, that will help the parties involved to continue it.

If one cannot help better the situation, for God's Sake, please don't make it any worse.

Autism Blog Comments Article By Yours Truly

2008-11-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

Could be wrong, but I think that every aspiring writer, artist, or other creative type has at least the occasionaly day-dream about being discovered by a working writer, editor, agent or producer, and being given a chance by that person to show a sample of some of his or her stuff to the world.

Well, it happened to me last Thursday evening, when I went onto one of Lisa Jo Rudy's old blog posts on the Autism section of About.com, the link to which is enclosed, here,http://autism.about.com/b/2008/05/26/autism-parents-and-two-kinds-of-love.htm,
which was, in its turn, a discussion of a New York magazine article, “The New Wave of Autism Rights Activists” by Andrew Solomon, the link to which is here at http://nymag.com/news/features/47225/index1.html.

So, I went back to Ms. Rudy's blog, and, mind you, was in a bit of a furious tizzy at some of the various comments I had seen, as well as at various posts on an autism forum that had joined several days prior to seeing these articles, and dashed off a lengthy commentary on the sorts of nastiness between the various camps in the Autism community, to whose on-going debates am still a newbie, I'll admit.

Well, I was pretty surprised and flattered when I received an e-mail from Ms. Rudy the next morning, saying how much she enjoyed my comments and asking me if I would mind having them printed in an article of their own on her blog.

I immediately said Yes, and quite a bit more beyond that, I can assure you, and, yesterday afternoon, they were.

Am just tickled pink, as can be imagined, by this, and by the positive comments about them(5 thus far, as of last night), left on that post.

Now, whether or not this will ever lead to anything else beyond this, I will have to wait and see on.

It may not, in which case, that's fine, as I can continue doing whatever it is I do anyhow.

If it does, well, I will have to see and decide upon if and when, and only thus, more such opportunities come my way.

Can get myself worked up over what may appear to be a new opportunity for self-expression, and yes, -advancement, as I would love nothing more than to be able to support myself by writing and other creative pursuits.

But, as my therapist has often told me in the past, "Let's cross that bridge, when we come to it", and not before, which I think is sound advice.

So, am enjoying this for what it is, and while it lasts, and am trying not to expect anything more to come from it, which can be quite hard for me, but is necessary, I think.

Anyhow, enough blather about all that.

Here's the link to the article,http://autism.about.com/b/2008/11/22/an-adult-with-autism-makes-a-case-for-moderation-in-the-autism-wars.htm#gB3.

Would very like like to thank Ms. Lisa Jo Rudy for reading these comments in an old post, seeing whatever merit they may have, and for publishing them in her blog at About.com.

That was, and is, a very kind and gracious set of things for her to do, particularly as she didn't have to take either the time or trouble to do them.

Ms. Rudy, you've my thanks and gratitude for doing this.

In closing, I would like also like to thank a Twitter friend/follower of mine, "disability", who designs and constructs web-sites for disabled people, and who has Cerebral Palsy himself.

If it weren't for the links that he posts from his site(am going to give you the address to the site's Autism section here, http://www.disabilityresourcelinks.com/autism/, I would never have found Ms. Rudy's article, and the last two posts here simply wouldn't exist.

So, many thanks to "disability" for the links, and bravo to him for all he does!!!

Please read the articles at the various links, see what you think of the various arguments, including my own, presented therein, and decide for yourselves.

Be seeing you.

On The 30th Anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre

2008-11-18T22:51:00.000-08:00

To-day marks the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre, in which a little over 900 people, who were members of the San Francisco-based People's Temple, either committed suicide by drinking a cynanide-laced, imitation Kool-Aid brand soft drink called Flavor-Aid, were injected with poison, or were shot by members of the People's Temple security force at the settlement in western Guyana, at the behest of the church's leader, the Reverend Jim Jones.

The settlement had been established in Guyana two years prior to the massacre, as a refuge from what Jones and the People's Temple's members considered to be a ruthlessly racist and fascist-minded America, and it was hoped by those same people that a new, egalitarian, socialist society could be successfully founded and run there.

Because of media and US government investigations into the Temple's finances and other practises, as well as allegations by former People's Temple members of various forms of abuse by the church's leadership, all of which culminated in a visit by Congressman Leo Ryan to Jonestown a few days before the massacre, which ended when Congressman Ryan, the staffers accompaning him, and a number of news media personnel, were gunned down by People's Temple security personnel,as they waited for an airplane to take them back to the US, at Kaituma airstrip, only a few miles from Jonestown, on 17th November, 1978.

In the fear and paranoia already running rampant among Jones, the people immediately around him, and among many of the ordinary church members, Jones made the decision that, in light of what had happened to Ryan and the other members of his party, it would be best for the settlers at Jonestown, himself included, to commit an act of “revolutionary suicide against the conditions of an inhumane world,” as Jones himself put it in his address to his followers that day, rather than, and most especially in the case of the People's Temple's children, being subjected to potential interrogation and torture by American troops, whom Jones imagined would be dispatched to Guyana once news of Ryan's death had got out.

That, along with a high-ranking People's Temple leader, who killed herself and three children in Georgetown, Guyana's capital, that same day, is what happened 30 years ago to-day.

The temple dissolved itself very shortly thereafter.

But, the cultural after-effects linger to this day, especially in the many popular culture references to the Jonestown Massacre(at least two theatrical and television films giving a fictionalised depiction of the People's Temple and the Jonestown Massacre have been made, and there have been any number of depictions of fictional cults based on the People's Temple that have appeared in many more films and television programmes since then), especially in the phrase, “Drinking the Kool-Aid”, which means an unthinking willingness to swallow what beliefs a given belief system has.

However, there were real people who died in Jonestown and in Georgetown on 18th November, 1978, and who died, not necessarily because they were a bunch of wackos with bizarre beliefs.

That's the most superficial and wrong-headed take on the Jonestown Massacre, I think.

The People's Temple, especially what it became in the early-to mid-1970's, was an outgrowth of, first, the idealism and hope for change brought about by the civil rights movement of the 1950's and '60's, and, second, of the despair, fear and cynicism brought about by the Viet-Nam War, the political, social and cultural conflicts born of that war, and the revelations in the early and mid-1970's about Watergate, the CIA's dirty deeds in many parts of the world as revealed in the Church Comission report of 1975, and many other similar events.

Many People's Temple members, leaders and led alike, had begun as activists and supporters of the civil rights movement, the anti-Viet-Nam War movement, and other, similar contemporary movements, or, at the very least, had the experience of being African-American or Latino and poor in a country that barely tolerated their existence before and during that period.

In that regard, they were actually quite similar to many Americans who lived through that period, who had felt that initial rush of optimism that America and the world could be changed for the better, and who saw those hopes dashed, not just once, or twice, but again, and again, and again.

Some of the People's Temple's contemporaries continued on in their involvement with the Democratic Party or various civil rights, feminist and other organisations; others still went farther left-ward, whether to the various political sects like the Bay Area Maoist Alliance(to-day's Revolutionary Communist Party),and a few even went so far as to join urban guerrilla groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army, to-day most famous for kidnapping Patty Hearst in 1975, and most of whom were killed in a shoot-out with police in Oakland, California in 1976.

Others yet, simply dropped out of politics entirely, and either went into self-improvement belief systems like Gestalt or Esalen, or tried to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives.

Cynicism and boredom, along with a feeling of doom throughout much of general American culture, thanks to the ever-present shadow of nuclear anihilation in the middle part of the Cold War years(please remember that this is around the same time that the survivalist movement got its start), were the hallmarks of the day in American culture.

Every major institution that most Americans had been raised to believe in and trust had been shown wanting in the 1960's and '70's, and, when combined with Nixon's two electoral victories in 1968 and 1972, and the Watergate scandal that toppled his presidency in 1974, I think that a fair number of Americans, People's Temple members included, could understandably become very, very cynical about the American political and social systems, and their capacities for any meaningful change.

Most Americans who felt that way, however, didn't take the People's Temple route, just as they didn't take the Weathermen's or Symbionese Liberation Army's route, either.

Nonetheless, those People's Temple leaders and members, even with the extreme version of those beliefs, weren't alien creatures dropped down from another planet, lunatics just released from an insane asylum, nor vicious criminals out of a comic book or thriller novel, like the Executioner series then popular and widely sold in supermarkets and other such stores in 1970's America.

They were people who, in their disappointment, frustration, rage, and fear at what had happened in America in the 1960's and '70's, and who were afraid that America would become even more viciously reactionary and racist, ended up following a man who had a set of beliefs in the ideals of equality and socialism, which later on ended up evolving into a declared belief in communism.

However, this same man, the Reverend Jim Jones, was also paranoid, and, as time went on, and the Temple's members and resources grew, one who let the power he had over the member's lives and resources corrupt him in ways great and small.

Jones and his flock didn't just wake up one morning and decide, “You know what??? To-day's a GREAT day to kill ourselves!!! Whaddya think???”.

This was the end of a process of years of feeling persecuted and hounded, and, in the last two years of the Temple's existence, those feelings would certainly seem to have had at least some objective backing by the US government's, and media, investigations into the church's financial and other practises, all of which culminated in Congressman Leo Ryan's ill-fated visit to Jonestown in November, 1978.

I am, by no means, defending Jones's, or the People's Temple's, beliefs and practises.

From what little I know of them, there was much going on within the church that was indefensible, at the very least.

What I am trying to do is explain, however badly on my part, how and why the People's Temple's leaders and members felt the ways they did, and their rationale behind the suicides and murders that took place in Jonestown and Georgetown, Guyana on 18th November, 1978.

I had no family, friends nor acquaintances whom I lost there on that day.

I've no intimate, nor, as far as I know, even distant, connections to the People's Temple and its members.

I was just a little over a month older than 14 on that day, and was living with my mother, father, and two of my sisters in a trailer outside of Reno, Nevada, when this happened.

This was simply another tv news story to me, and, when the television movie starring Powers Boothe as the Reverend Jim Jones appeared in 1981, it was another tv film, albeit one I thought, at the time, that was quite well done, to me as well.

It wasn't until seeing a documentary on the People's Temple and the Jonestown Massacre on PBS two years ago that I became interested in the People's Temple and the Jonestown Massacre, and it was in the course of noodling around for information about both on-line that I came across this site, “Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple,” at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/, that I began acquiring what little sense I have about the People's Temple, its leaders and members, what happened throughout the church's existence, and how it came to its grisly end.

There are documents, textual, pictoral and audio, on there, and on other sites linked to it, from a variety of viewpoints, including those who were People's Temple members, defectors from the Temple, and many others, including some from a perspective not generally given at all in accounts of the People's Temple and the Jonestown Massacre-the Guyanan perspective.

To those who would say, “So who cares what the Guyanans thought about this???”, I would rejoinder that the settling of Jonestown, and the Jonestown Massacre, happened in Guyana, on Guyanan soil, and that it was Guyana Defence Force troops who first came into Jonestown after the massacre, and saw what had taken place there.

Therefore, this event is as much a part of Guyanan history as it is American, and any viewpoint that doesn't take this into account is incomplete, at best.

It was on this site that I began to see the People's Temple members as they were, fellow Americans and fellow human beings with whom I had this in common-we had been through, from very different angles, yes, many, if not all, of the same historical circumstances and events.

What particularly struck me was coming across, in the photos section of the web-site, photographs of children and teen-agers, many of whom either would be my age, or just barely older or younger than I am to-day, and realising that, for them, there never would be a growing-up.

That stopped, along with their lives, at an agricultural settlement in western Guyana on 18th November, 1978.

They didn't deserve to have this happen to them, whatever the beliefs, follies and crimes of their elders, and none of these people, whatever their role in the People's Temple, and whatever their deeds or mis-deeds, deserve simply to be dismissed as a bunch of nuts who threw their lives away for nothing.

Yes, they threw their lives away for a paranoid, frightened leader who had long ago succumbed to the temptations of egotism and arrogance that power, even a relatively small-scale power such as Jones had, over the lives and destinies of others; a man who, in his frightened foolishness, ordered murderously foolish deeds, including the mass suicide-murder of himself and his followers.

They were wrong, and wrong-headed, to follow such a man.

But, they weren't mere nuts.

They were human beings, as full of grace and graceless, as you and I.

Their death was a sad, needless one.

Jones, in life, preached a form, of egalitarianism that later became socialist, and finally, communist, in form.

But, at the end of the day, he didn't practise what he preached very well. Not at all.

So, in closing, I would say this to my friends and colleagues on the Left.

Don't always take someone for the genuine article because he or she has a fine rap that gets all of the brothers, sisters and comrades jumping up and down for joy.

Watch his or her actions, and especially the way in he or she treats those around him or her, carefully.

If there is too much of a conflict between the fine words used by this person, and the shabby ways in which he or she treats those around him or her, walk away from them, and have nothing more to do with them.

Encourage others to do the same, as well, especially if the leader involved has knows what he or she is doing is wrong, and has absolutely no intention of changing his or her ways.

Jones wasn't the first, nor the last, leader who used socialist ideals and beliefs, just as other politicians and leaders have used their respective ideals and beliefs, to justify the worst offences of which they were capable.

But, we can, and must, avoid letting people of Jones' calibre lead others down the garden path to no-where, and we must avoid succumbing to the same temptations that power, especially unbridled power, can bring.

To those readers who are not on the Left, I would say this, please remember that people,even idealistic, well-intentioned, reasonably intelligent people, are quite capable of making decisions and taking actions that, in the end, result in sheer horror.

To me, these are the lessons of Jonestown.

Others are free to draw their own conclusions from this, but these are the ones I take away.

Here Endeth The Lesson, and Be Seeing You.

An Apology For The Mis-Information About The Anti-Prop 8 Protests

2008-11-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

Earlier this afternoon, I posted a trio of links about various and sundry anti-Prop 8 protests to be found, both nationally and in the Las Vegas and Reno areas.

Well, I left the house and headed over to where the protest was going to be held, only to find out that they are scheduled for to-morrow afternoon, not to-day.

This, some of you may already know.

To them, and to the rest of you out there, I wish to apologise, because it was my stupid misunderstanding of the day and my rush in posting the links so I could get out the door to attend the protest that caused that.

No-one held a gun to my head. I got in a hurry-scurry mode, and passed out bad info.

That is my fault, and I wish to sincerely apologise to all of you out there for doing that.

Thank You for your time and attention.

Yours, D.

Three Links To GLBTQ Anti-Proposition 8 Protests, Both Nationally and in Nevada, To-Day

2008-11-14T12:45:00.000-08:00

Here are a trio of links, which I got from a People For The American Way e-mail this afternoon, to Join The Impact!!! web-pages for info about anti-Proposition 8 protests being held nation-wide to-day.

The first is to the national page, http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/?t=anon, where one can click on the name of one's state or other territory to be taken to the appropriate page for more information on where and when these protests are taking place in one's area.

The second is to the Nevada page, where one can find the times and locations of anti-Prop 8 protests in either the Las Vegas or Reno areas, at http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/page/Nevada, and the third's to the Las Vegas, Nevada page at http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/page/Las+Vegas, where one can find the protest location, complete with Google Map of the area in which it will be held, and start and stop times for the protest.

If you can't make it to any of these, please diffuse this information as widely as you can, if you are able and willing to.

Be seeing you, or at least some of you, at the protests, and thanks for reading this.

An Apology To My Californian Friends and Readers

2008-11-08T21:27:00.000-08:00

Received a graciously critical reply to the message enclosed along with the Courage Campaign Repeal Prop 8 link I sent out this afternoon from an old and dear friend of mine, who justifiably criticised the use of certain nasty terms in it, as well as its loose grip on the facts regarding civil unions and its pedantic tone.

Have already apologised to her in my reply to her message, and promised that I would send out a similar apology to you all as soon as I was done with my reply to her.

So, here it is, in plural form, addressed to each and every one of you who read the earlier message.

The only defensible reason I can and will give for the use of those terms is that, in confronting the many attitudes that support Prop 8 and other measures, including Nevada's own Defense of Marriage Act, far too often, these attitudes are disguised by language like "Defense of", and "Protection of" "Traditional Values", "Family Values" and the like.

All of these are euphemisms, as you and I, and indeed, the other people to whom I sent this message already well know.

For me, the idea in using those terms is to strip away the euphemisms masking the attitudes and beliefs underneath.

I don't endorse those attitudes nor their expression, either verbally, rhetorically nor physically.

My intention was, and is, to say to those who may hold such attitudes, "All right, you don't like such people. Fine. Doesn't give you the right to keep them from making an honest living, getting married, having kids, or doing anything else that isn't harmful to you or anyone else."

Thinking about it now, this is the approach that I'd have best taken to start.

So, when this reply is done, I will publish what I've just written above, along with apologies for the use of those terms and the factual errors about civil unions, in my next blog post, which I will publish this evening.

I will offer no excuses for the terms nor for the errors, period.

Will also do so in a shortened version which I will send to the others to whom I sent this message.

The more I think about it, the more I can see that the use of such terms, while meant to strip away the polite veneer masking the ugliness underneath, not only hurts those who are direct targets of those terms, and worse, and alienates those who support the victims of such abuse, such as yourself, but also, by using them in an attack on those who do hold those beliefs, only strengthens those beliefs, because no one likes being called a son of a bitch, even if one is a son of a bitch, and only gives rise to a "Screw you!!!" mentality on the part of the person or persons being called that.

Now that I think about it, I think that I can see, however dimly, that, by stripping away any legitimacy of belief or choice on such people's part, I deny them the same amount of humanity and capacity for change that I would like for myself and others to enjoy.

In short, am doing, albeit rhetorically, the same damned thing some of 'em do to others-taking away their rights and humanity.

That, too, will be acknowledged in the follow-up essay to come, and in the message I send out to the others.

I also apologise for the pedantic tone of the essay.

Thought I was writing a corker of an essay, when, in fact, I pulled a bone-head stunt.

For perpetrating something like this, and for wasting your time, I most sincerely apologise.

It wasn't my intention to cause anyone any harm in any way, and most certainly not to waste time, energy and effort on your parts by indulging myself in bad rhetoric.

I did, and that's my responsibility.

I can be an over-enthusiastic jack-ass at times, and this was definitely one of them.

If you can forgive me for this, I would be honoured.

If not, I entirely understand.

Life's too short to put up with junk, even well-intentioned junk, and that was what I put out this afternoon.

Be seeing you.

Yours, D.

To My Californian Friends

2008-11-08T14:39:00.001-08:00

This is the text, very slightly edited for blog form, of a message I included along with a link to the Courage Campaign's Repeal Prop 8 petition web-page link, and sent to some friends of mine of who live in California this afternoon.

Have already signed the petition, though, since am a Nevadan, have scant confidence that it will qualify to be placed on the petition, and rightfully so.

Nonetheless, I think that, by sending the link to them, and by including the message to them that went with it here, I can do my tiny bit for the cause of greater equality and democracy, not only in California or Nevada, but in the US as well.

Hey there!!!!

Hope you're all doing better than well out there.

Mr. Amigo and I are still alive and still kicking back here.

Anyhow, just wanted to give you a link to the Courage Campaign's Repeal Prop 8 web-page, in the hopes that you might sign the petition to repeal Proposition 8 there.

Now, you may be asking yourselves, why have I singled you out here??? Well, mainly because you live in California, and this is, at least in my opinion, an affair of no small importance to your state and its people, including yourselves.

So, you may be asking yourselves and me, "Why should I care whether or not a bunch of nancy-boys and carpet-chewers get to marry???".

OK, here's the answer: marriage rights confer, not just the right for one individual to permanently co-habit with another(if that were the case, one might as well not bother getting married at all), but confer the power of attorney in legal, medical, and financial arenas, if one of the partners involved becomes incapacitated or dies.

Well, I don't know about you, but it seems to me that that's a pretty whopping amount of rights and duties involved there, and married status carries with those a certain amount of legal protections and privileges(tax deductions, for example)not given to singles or people living outside of legally-recognised wedlock.

Civil unions, which are the proposed substitute for marriage rights for gays and lesbians, don't, as far as I know, include the same amount, if any, of those same rights, duties, privileges and protections, as does marriage, period.

One could say that civil unions are the legal equivalent of saccharine or near beer-a poor substitute that only barely approximates the look, taste and feel of the real thing, and, like all such substitutes, is at best, a poor copy of it.

Also, this fight for marriage rights for gays and lesbians is, I believe, part of a much longer, broader struggle for greater equality and democracy in this country that has taken place from the very beginning of our Republic.

How so???

Please don't forget that, when this Union was founded in 1789, only propertied European-American males above the age of 21 could vote, women's social, economic and political statuses were tied to their fathers' or husbands, and African-Americans and Native Americans had no rights whatsoever under the Constitution, and were counted as being only 3/4ths of a person in the various national and state censuses.

It took well over a century of fighting, first with Dorr's Rebellion in Rhode Island in 1838, to end the property qualification for European-American males suffrage, a brutal and bloody Civil War, and the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution before African-Americans were no longer legally regarded as mere property, the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, before women 21 years and older could vote, and the passage of the 1964 Voting Rights Act that ended the system of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means of suppressing African-American suffrage in the American South, among many other struggles, many of which continue to-day, to bring about even a partial realisation of the promise of a more perfect union, founded on liberty and justice for all.

There are those out there who have, for reasons of their own, deep-rooted antipathies towards gays and lesbians.

These reasons may be religiously, culturally or aestethically-based.

So be it.

Some of you may share some of those reasons and the feelings behind them. I don't know.

To those who do, I say this.

Your objections to homosexuality and lesbianism are yours, for reasons that best make sense to you. Fine and dandy.

What isn't fine and dandy is when those objections, in whatever form, are made into public policy and law, because they affect EVERYONE, in some way or another, in this culture, and not just the objects of one's disdain.

This isn't just not allowing some mincing bum-stuffer or bull-dyke into one's own home. That's a private area, in which one has a certain amount of discretion.

But, when one's prejudices are made into law, as Proposition 8 has been, that impacts on people whom one will never meet, let alone know, not just for to-day or in the short term, but quite possibly for generations yet to come, and it makes the legal system the enforcement arm for those prejudices, thus prostituting it in the furtherance of bigotry, and making a damned lie out of the promises made in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the various state constitutions about equality before the law and all that.

It's the enshrining of power and privileges for one segment of the population over another, and it is wrong for many reasons, but especially because it makes(again)a DAMNED lie out of the promises made by this country to its citizens.

To let Proposition 8 stand unchallenged, one might as well endorse a return to the social orders of 1789, or 1837, 1860, 1866, 1919, or 1963, and openly, proudly, say so and mean it.

At least then, one would be entirely consistent in one's devotion to a social and political order rooted in power and privileges for some, and a good, swift kick in the arse for others.

I have one final point to cover, and that is my enjoining you to please remember that those who deny rights, privileges and responsibilities to others may, at one point in time or another, find those same things denied to them, whether "gently"(there can be no truly gentle denial of rights, privileges and responsibilities, only a less brutal one)or brutally, and the reasons, justifications and excuses for that will be just as paper-thin, and just as wrong, and wrong-headed, in so many ways, it ain't even funny.

If you'd not be a slave, don't be a master, to paraphrase a saying by Abraham Lincoln.

Any political system that calls itself a democracy, whether of the liberal, representative type found in the US and much of the developed world, or the old socialist "People's Democracies" of the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, must ensure that the rights and needs of all of its people are put first and foremost in its ideas and practises.

Those that, for whatever reasons, don't, are, at best, limited democracies, and, at worst, grotesque, lying parodies of democracies.

This recent Presidential election was, I believe, a chance for us to truly strengthen and deepen our democracy in the US.

Here's another chance, albeit on a slightly smaller stage and a different issue, for you and yours to keep on doing those in your state.

The link follows below.

I thank you for the time and trouble you've taken in reading at least some of this, and my apologies to you for its length.

http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/repealprop8

Be seeing you.

Petition To Open The Presidential Debates Link

2008-11-06T13:48:00.000-08:00

If you happen to have a Facebook account, please head on over to the following link below to sign a petition urging that the presidential debates be opened up to any and all viable presidential candidates in future elections, not just the Republican and Democratic ones.

Why is this important???

Because, one of the best ways of strengthening and deepening our democracy here in the US, is to ensure that the American people get to see and hear from as wide a range of presidential candidates from the various parties, major and minor, as possible.

That way, potential voters will have a solid idea of the range of ideological, policy and other choices available to them before going to the polls.

One may not like some of the candidates and what they represent when seen in the debates, but it is better to see and dislike them, than to not even know they exist at all.

The address follows below. Be seeing you.

http://apps.facebook.com/petitions/view?pid=102854622

On Obama's Victory

2008-11-05T20:35:00.000-08:00

In the aftermath of Obama's victory last night, I have the following things to say: the first being-OUTSTANDING!!!!

This is a victory that was long in coming, and not just for Obama's supporters, Democrats, and their sympathisers, but for the vast majority of the American people, who are lower-middle-class, working-class and poor, and who have generally been either ignored, used as pawns, or lied to in this country for much of its history.

That said, one thing to remember about Obama, and that he is a centre-Left Democrat, not a socialist, not a communist, and most definitely not an anarchist.

This means that one would be best advised not to expect huge changes in US domestic and foreign policies right off the bat, and that, depending on how and where one stands on any number of given issues, that there will be disappointments, and even times where one may stand up and scream at the top of one's lungs, "What the Fuck are you thinking???!!!" about some of them.

The New Millennium and the New Jerusalem are not here, and we'll not be led into them by Obama, nor anyone else.

But, especially after the last twenty-eight years of the Reagan Revolution and Republican dominance of American political ideology and politics, especially since the Congressional elections of 1994 and the Presidential election of 2000, there is now, both in the White House and on Capitol Hill, a breed of folks who are willing and, I hope, able to take on the many important issues that seriously need addressing in this country that have gotten short shrift for so long.

Many of these problems are of long-standing and will NOT be solved within the first three or six months of the Obama Administration, nor even within the confines of a first Obama Administration.

There will be no magic-wand waving, automatic problem-solving solutions served up, like a short-order cook serving up a plate of liver and onions to go, by the new Administration, and one is best advised to take that into account from the get-go.

All that said, the Obama victory represents to me, not just the expulsion of the Republicans from the White House, and the further decrease of their power in the House and Senate, but a victory over some of the worst and nastiest parts of our collective psychology.

For all the race- and religion-baiting that went on in the campaign, Obama's victory proved that those tactics work less and less well in many parts of the US.

Screaming "Nigger!!!" at the top of one's lungs, however directly or indirectly, and bashing people for being "socialists", "communists", etc, don't quite have the Pavlovian-reflex, "Can't let THAT happen!!!" response from much of the American voting public that they used to get, and thank God for that.

Much of the appeal of the Reagan Revolution, as well as the Goldwater and George Wallace campaigns before it, were rooted in a nostalgia for a seemingly simpler time in American history, with MGM-esque ideals of small, mainly-, if not all-white, towns, where Just Plain Folks worked hard, went to church on Sunday, obeyed all the laws and rules, and everyone knew their place and got along.

That picture of 19th and early 20th Century America was, at best, a half-truth, and, at worst, a damned lie told, by the folks at MGM and other Hollywood studios, to sell movie tickets, and by politicians and pundits to advance their agendas.

We know what those agendas are, because so much of what was in them has been made into reality over these 27 years past.

Either way, the American people, at least a goodly percentage of them, bought into this, in one way or another, and, as a result, this country is in quite a mess at home and abroad.

The time for nostalgia for a time and place that never really existed is long over.

There is the present, and the future, and, depending on the ideas, words and actions that the Obama Administration, Congress, the various state and local governments, business and other institutions, and we so-called ordinary Americans decide to undertake, we can, by mid-century, either have a soundly functioning, though imperfect, nation that continues to improve, a badly functioning one that barely works in any area of endeavour at all, or, worst of all, a Balkanised collection of successor states born of failures of ideas, policies and actions at every level, including and especially the popular level.

These are the choices that we and our posterity face that stand out most strongly to me in the years and decades ahead.

The changes that I believe are necessary to have the US better live up to the ideals and promises made by our Founding Fathers and their successors, right down to the present day, must in one form or another be implemented, and they probably won't be implemented in either a first, or, if it should come to pass, a second Obama Administration.

Many of them, I hope, will at least get their starts during that time, and will be further improved upon and deepened over the course of time.

But, only if our governing classes, business classes, media classes, and especially we, the American people, are willing and able to do that.

If either none, or too few, of any of us are, we will find ourselves far worse off than we are now down the road, and we will have no-one, and I repeat NO-ONE, but ourselves to blame for that situation.

John McCain, however bitter and at times nasty, he and his campaign could get during the election campaign, gave, in my view, a lovely and gracious concession speech last night.

For that, if nothing else, he has my respect.

I would hope that some of his supporters might feel the same way and act in a likewise manner.
However, I don't expect many of them to do so.

What I do expect out of them is to at least disagree with the Obama Administration and its supporters in a relatively civilised manner, without resorting to racial or religious bigotry.

If they cannot do that, they are worthy of neither attention nor respect whatsoever.

No one political party, faction, racial, ethnic, religious or economic group is entitled to for-ever hang onto power in the US Constitution, as far as I know, and that includes Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, or any other party presently active in the US political system.

Oh, there are those that have tried, but, in the end, have failed to do that

In time, the Democrats will eventually lose power, as happens in any reasonably functioning representative democratic system of government, and be succeeded by either the Republicans or one of the many minor parties.

But, in the meantime, they are in power, and it's my sincerest hope that they will use it wisely and well.

If not, they will deserve to lose power, as have the Republicans.

To my fellow Democrats, and to my colleagues and comrades on the greater American Left, we now have a chance to make this country, and to help make this planet, safer, saner, better places than when we found them.

Let's not blow it.

To the Republicans and other conservatives, I say this; the best conservatives, it seems to me, wish to keep the very best aspects of their societies and cultures going. That can best be done by recognising that the larger the number of people in their culture who can either only barely earn a living or not earn a living at all, the more violent, crime-and-vice-ridden, and ultimately unstable it will be, especially over the long-term.

They don't, as Thomas Paine remarked about Edmund Burke's attitude towards the French monarchy overthrown by the French Revolution, "pity the plumage but forget about the dying bird."

They recognise that the more economically and socially secure their people, and not just the upper classes and their supporters, are, the more stable and happier their society will be.

Those who fail to recognise that fact, and insist that solutions involving more police, more prisons, and/or the exclusive use of military force in foreign and domestic affairs, are the ONLY solutions worth considering, are setting themselves and their posterity up for a very hard fall indeed.

There is much work to be done, and it is time to get to it.

Be seeing you.

To-Day's The Day

2008-11-04T09:01:00.000-08:00

That's right. It's Election Day in these fifty United States, plus Puerto Rico and the various territories associated with the US.

So, if you're eligible to vote, and haven't already done so, especially in those parts of the US like my home state of Nevada, where one can vote early(which I did on Thursday last), go do it to-day.

Don't procrastinate about this. MAKE the time and take the trouble to vote, because of the importance of this particular election's out-come to not only the US, but the world.

I voted for Obama/Biden, and I would urge all those who call themselves progressives, whether of a moderate, liberal or radical stripe, to do likewise.

If you can't bring yourself to do that, at least vote for Nader/Gonzalez, Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party's Presidential nominee, or the various nominees for the Peace and Freedom Party, Communist Party USA, Socialist Workers' Party, or any of the other Left parties that may be on the ballot in your particular part of the Union.

If you're of a rightist bent, then vote for Bob Barr, the Libertarian Presidential nominee, the American(Independent American Party in Nevada)Party's nominee, or whomever else you feel will do the job.

As for McCain/Palin, I won't endorse votin' for 'em. But, if that's whom you support the most strongly, then vote for 'em, nonetheless.

Either way, and for whomever you go and vote, just get out there and vote as soon as possible.

Authoritarian types love small electoral turn-outs, because those results, and those constituencies that do participate, are just that much easier to control.

So, what are you waiting for??? An engraved invitation from the Czar of All the Russias???? Well, forget about that, 'cos, the Czar's long-gone, and so's his staff, so forget about the invite.

Just go down to your local polling place, get in line, and take the time and trouble to cast your vote for the candidates and causes you want.

Do it TO-DAY, 'cos to-morrow's gonna be too damn little, too damn late, and the polls will be closed.

Vote, so at the very least, you'll have earnt the right to bitch about the results, policies and out-comes of this election, and the people put in as a result thereof.

If you don't, that's on your head, and yours alone.

Finally, to any Californians reading this, please vote NO on Prop. 8. Marriage is for everyone, or at least should be.

That's it from here.

Go vote, and be seeing you.

Hallowe’en Early Voting Turn-Out In Las Vegas

2008-10-31T19:27:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to let y'all know really fast that, while I was out walking around my neighbourhood with a neighbour of mine, she happened to espy a long line of people extending out of the Albertson's supermarket at the intersection of Bonanza and Lamb, here in North-East Las Vegas.

When she inquired as to what they were doing, I guessed that they were turning out to vote in the current election.

After I parted from my neighbour a few minutes later, I went across the street to go into a nearby drugstore and pick up, at very last minute, some Hallowe'en candy for any of the local squabs that might come a-knockin' this All-Hallows Eve.

Before I did that, went up to a campaign worker at the line's end, and asked if this was the line for voting.

She replied in the affirmative, and mentioned to me that, while the polls were being advertised as closing at 7:00 PM PDT, polling would continue at that location beyond that time.

Shortly thereafter, an election observer called out the news that the line at the Albertson's located on Nellis and Vegas Valley was considerably shorter than the one at Bonanza and Lamb, and those who could get there might wish to do that.

The campaign worker with whom I'd been speaking went up to him and asked him about the polling hours, to which he replied that anyone who was still in line at 7:00 PM would be allowed to vote then.

From there, went into the drugstore, got the Hallowe'en candy, and pissed off home to write this.

I can tell you, from my own experience yesterday, and from seeing the line outside the Albertson's to-night that, if the early voting turn-out's any indication of what it might be on Election Day proper, I have a feeling that it will be a very high percentage of the eligible electorate in Southern Nevada, if not the rest of the state.

Makes for a refreshing change from the usual miserably low turn-outs here, especially in local elections.

Happy Hallowe'en, and Be Seeing You.

Joe The Plumber, Or Dog-Whistle Politics, Part Two

2008-10-22T23:30:00.001-07:00

Originally wrote this as a comment to the last essay-lette I wrote on this topic, and posted to a blog on my page at I-Power. The commentator left three YouTube videos featuring Joe Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, as well as a couple of text comments indicating that he agreed with Mr. Wurzelbacher.

Well, saw the last of those video comments, an interview he gave the Toledo Blade after the last Presidential debate, and, to be blunt, Mr. Wurzelbacher didn't say anything in it, that I haven't heard, read nor seen on-line a thousand or so times before, whether out of the mouths of politicians, pundits or so-called ordinary folks like Mr. Wurzelbacher.

Frankly, that kind of logic, thought and rhetoric bores me to tears and then some, because they are so familiar.

Half of what Wurzelbacher says in the Toledo Blade interview is practically imbibed along with mother's milk in many European-American lower-middle-class and working-class households, and is based, like it or not, in a couple of sentiments also commonly found in those homes, the first being "Thank God We're White", and the second, as articulated by the late James Baldwin in a 1987 Playboy essay, "Poverty is for niggers."

All the talk about personal responsibility, pulling oneself by one's own boot-straps, and all the rest of that comes from those sentiments, plus a feeling of entitlement to whatever resources that are available, and all the rest of it is just so much blah-blah designed to cover that.

I've no respect for Nazi-skinheads and assorted other racists, but I will say that, though some of them also try and goop their nastiness over by saying that it's about "White Pride" rather than good old-fashioned race hatred just like Mother used to make, I prefer their brand of logic and rhetoric, simply because they make no bones about their hatred, don't try to pretend they're good, and one knows exactly from where they're coming.

That's the only area in which I find people like that preferable, but, nonetheless, they are, for the most part, relatively honest about it.

There are, and have been, for the past two, nearly three decades, now, a decidedly upwardly skewed redistribution of wealth in this country, and a fair part of the world besides, and Mr. Wurzelbacher and other folks like him either don't see it, or don't want to see it, plain and simple.

Hell, if they could get in on the gravy train, they would, and with both hands outstretched as far as possible to get every little bit they could.

But, they've neither the education, the skills, nor the social and business connections required to make that happen, and, some very great exceptions aside, never will, plain and simple.

Doesn't stop 'em from dreamin', though.

Point is, considering that incomes for the vast majority of Americans, middle and lower-middle-class, working-class and poor have essentially stagnated or barely kept pace with rising costs in every area of life over the past thirty-forty years, such dreams are silly and wrong-headed.

Tax cuts for the one percent of Americans who belong to the upper and upper-middle-classes don't trickle down much to the rest of us, as, in many cases, the money that comes from those cuts is socked away in tax shelters and other forms of investments designed to benefit their holders, but that are essentially held back from the rest of the economy.

Those at the top layer of American society have no real love or regard for folks like Mr. Wurzelbacher, you, My dear Picidae, me, nor anyone else outside of their social circles whom they don't know, and why should they???

They don't know us, except as a sort of generalised mass of people, and one, and I don't care from part of the ideological spectrum one comes, can love people en masse and mean it.

Love is an emotion, as fickle and changeable as any other.

Respect and regard, while more reliable, come only through a certain amount of inter-personal contact, which most upper-class Americans have with lower-class ones only in the roles of master and man, employer and employee, and whatever other term one might want to use for that kind of relationship.

Hard to have anything in the way of genuine respect for someone when they are, though it is rarely explicitly said, one's social and economic inferior, and vice versa.

There's dependence, sure, fear for one's position and one's living, definitely, and a combination of the two built into every interaction between people from different classes.

But, I would say that it's pretty rare to find examples of genuine regard and respect between members of those classes, because of the way in which social and economic relations in this country are, and have been, from the beginning of this country.

Add in race, gender, sexual orientation, and any number of other factors one could care to name, and the anxiety levels and social tensions rise accordingly.

Ultimately, the idea that all Americans are just one big group of "pals" who are more or less equal in terms of rights, duties, etc, is a pretty laughable con-job.

There are significant differences between Americans, as in any other human group, that can be named, and won't bore you with a laundry list of those, and those differences are found within these various groups, as well as between them, and to over-look those and say that some Americans don't have it better than others, is an epic con-job, especially on one's self if one actually believes it.

Many of these differences are ones that have been created by past generations of Americans to benefit themselves and theirs at others' expense.

This continent was conquered, plain and simple, by fair means and foul, by Europeans and their descendants, who used every trick in the book that they knew to do it, and then some.

American capitalism couldn't have enjoyed half of the expansion it did in the mid-and late 19th Century and early-to-mid-20th Century without the use of cheap labour, whether it was slave labour in the pre-Civil War South, working-class Americans fresh off the farm and European immigrant labour in the Northeast and Midwest, or Chinese, Mexican and working-class European-American labour in the West, to pump out goods at very low cost.

Our economic, political and military ascendancy began in those years, grew, even if the Great Depression put a bit of a bite on it in the 1930's, during and after the First World War, and was essentially sealed by the Allied victory in World War Two, and our dominance in those areas, in much of the world anyway, came about because our industrial, agricultural and other resource bases weren't heavily damaged or destroyed outright, as the other powers', whether Allied or Axis, had been during that war.

It is those factors, I believe, that has made the US as rich as it has been.

But, with all that wealth, there generally came not greater wisdom nor compassion, but greater greed, malice and the desire to not only hold on to what we had, but to grab still more, and, if it came at others' expense, whether individually or collectively, no matter, as long as we got it.

While the vast majority of the blame for this should rightly be put at the feet of the US governing and business classes, there were, and are, plenty of so-called ordinary Americans who went along with these policies and actions for reasons of their own, some of which I've already outlined here, and who did so, whether by not resisting actions like the Viet-Nam and Iraq Wars, voting for candidates whose ideas and policies were designed to benefit the upper classes and their supporters while punishing those members of the lower classes, especially if they weren't European-American in origin, or who, in word and deed, supported segregation, whether of the de jure sort found in the American South, or the de facto kind found in the rest of the Union, and who resent and resist any changes, however small and late-coming, that have been made in that area of American life since the mid-1950's.

They have their fair share of the blame for the sort of mess we're in now, and have it coming, straight up, no chaser.

This doesn't mean that there aren't resentful, angry chuckleheads in the African-American, Latino, Asian-American, Native American, or Pacific Islander communities, who aren't also prejudiced and hateful. There are.

But, with the exception of a small handful of such individuals, those communities have historically been much more on the receiving end of the dirty end of the stick than have most European-Americans, and especially most upper- and middle-class European Americans, and that's something that people like Mr. Wurzelbacher either don't see, or refuse to see.

Poverty, oppression and marginalisation have traditionally been, as Mr. Baldwin put it, "for niggers,", but also for immigrants, so-called poor white trash, and any other person or group that fell outside of the so-called American mainstream, and these sentiments continue, albeit in generally more muted form than in previous decades, to hang about, like the proverbial bad penny in one's wallet.

That's why I don't believe Joe Wurzelbacher, and others like him.

There's just too much God-Damned historical baggage in back of what he says for me to take him at his word, and, considering the McCain campaign's use of Mr. Wurzelbacher and his comments for all they're worth, I see its use of him and his comments as just another ploy to keep on keepin' on with one variant or another of the same tired old monkey business that's taken place in the US since its foundation.

Thanks, but no thanks, Wurzelbacher. No sale here.

As for McCain, Palin, et al, sorry, folks, but this dog ain't a-comin' when y'all call, and I sure as Hell's ain't a-gonna hunt for y'all.

So, take that right-wing populist dog whistle y'all got in your back pocket, and go put it somewhere far out of sight.

"The Orphan", Part Three

2008-10-19T03:04:00.001-07:00

From there, it'd been a relatively simple matter of driving down to New Pawtucket, signing up at the Outcomes Insurers office, selling off the jeep at a used car lot, and locating a cheap lodging to spend the two days to a week needed before the freighter bound for his eventual destination in Dystopia(which, according to the Outcomes Insurers personnel officer with whom Christopher spoke, couldn't be divulged for security reasons)sailed.

The three days of waiting for the ship's call were long and tedious, as was the voyage itself, during which he shared a cabin with three other figures, none of whom seemed much interested in talking about themselves, nor anything else.

That actually suited Christopher just fine, as he didn't much like the looks of his present company, and he'd enough in the way of anxieties about where they'd end up, what they'd be facing, and how Mary, the newbies and the garage were doing back home, to keep him occupied.

After two days, which seemed like two weeks to Christopher, the ship landed at its port of call, Port Victory in what had once been the People's Socialist Republic of Oceania.

Oceania, like its immediate neighbours, Eurasia and Eastasia, had been settled by figures who patterned themselves after the situations and characters in George Orwell's “1984”, right down to having the omnipresent Party and Big Brother. It had also been at ceaseless war with either one of its two neighbours since independence from Centralia in 2002, and had conquered Eurasia and Eastasia only a few months before joining its former coloniser in attacking Pacifica in late April, 2007.

That went even more disastrously for Oceania than Centralia, as its best military units had been destroyed or captured, and, in the war's closing days, New London, both the capital of Airstrip One and of Oceania as a whole, was heavily bombed, rocketed and pounded by Pacifican aircraft, missiles and naval artillery.

In the war's aftermath, Big Brother and the Party lost a great deal of face, and not even the dreaded People's Security Bureau could keep all sorts of dissidents, especially those in the Armed Forces, from moving against the State, which they did.

By the time, Christopher and his companions arrived in Oceania, its Eurasian and Eastasian possessions had completely broken off from it, and Oceania itself was divided among nearly a dozen or so contending factions, some led by former Party bosses, others by former dissidents, and all of whom desired to gain power and liquidate their opposition.

Christopher knew almost nothing about any of this, nor, if asked, would he have particularly cared. He was there to do his job, stay alive and in one piece, collect his money at job's end, and go home, and that was it.

He'd managed that part well enough, and had even made a few friends among his platoon mates, though Christopher really didn't want to buddy up with anyone in particular, as he'd no intention of
re-upping once his six-week tour ended.

Still, he realised that he needed someone besides himself to watch his back, if he was going to make it through the tour at all.

Its first three weeks had gone well enough for the platoon and Christopher, and they'd pushed hard into the areas held by their foes to the North and North-East of Port Victory.

At the fourth week's beginning, however, the enemy's resistance toughened up considerably, with 12 out of the platoon's 20 members killed, wounded or missing, and the unit ending up cut off from the rest of the army and trapped in a little village some 5 feet due south of O'Brien Mills, the north-western Oceanian city that'd been their objective not long ago.

Christopher and the rest of the platoon had held off their attackers for two days and a night, before being called into the wrecked village Party meeting hall that served as their headquarters on the second day's evening.

There, the platoon's commander, a vintage blond eagle-eye Action Man named Captain McKenzie told his surviving troops that, after finding out from their high command in Port Victory that there was no way any relief units could be sent to get them out of the village, he'd decided to dissolve the unit, and disperse its members in the hopes that at least one or two of them might make it back to Port Victory.

“Gentlemen,”(Christopher always chuckled at the memory of McKenzie's always calling his men that, even if most of them, including himself, could hardly be called that), Captain McKenzie drawled in his fruity upper-class tones, “I see no need for all of us to die in this beastly little place, eh??? So, gentlemen, I am giving you all one last order, and that is to fuck off out of here as quickly as possible. If any of us are lucky enough to make it back home(meaning Port Victory), and I run into you, I'll stand each and every one of you a drink or two. If not, It has been a pleasure serving with you. Good-bye, and Good Luck to each and every one of you.”

Even now, as Christopher was making his way across the plains of another devastated nation some 50 yards west of that little village, there were two memories of that night that amazed him, the first being McKenzie's using “fuck off”, as the Captain never, at least in his ear-shot, ever used profanity of any kind, and the other being the time and trouble McKenzie took, after giving his farewell benediction, to shake the hand of each and every one of his men, including Christopher, and individually wishing them good luck, before departing into the night with Sergeant Cacciatore, a vintage GI Joe Action Soldier.

There might be a lot of figures who could say a lot of bad things about McKenzie, Christopher often reflected to himself, but he wasn't one of them, especially since the Captain had done it all, as he seemed to do practically everything, with grace and style.

Christopher, who left the shattered ex-Party hall a few minutes after McKenzie and most of the others had gone, never saw him, Cacciatore, nor any of the others who'd gone before him and his two squad-mates, Robinson and Tamura, ever again.

He hoped they were still alive, but Christopher somehow doubted it, considering what happened to Robinson and Tamura after the trio left the village.

Yahoo News Article Link About Kidnapped 6 Year-Old Las Vegas Nevada Boy

2008-10-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

This is a Yahoo News article on the 6 year-old boy who was snatched from his East Las Vegas home two days ago.

Please re-post as widely as you can, and, if you know where he is and his current circumstances, please contact the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department sooner than quickest.

He shouldn't have to suffer for the mistakes and crimes of his grandfather.

Thank you for your kind attention and be seeing you.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081018/ap_on_re_us/nevada_boy_abducted

Joe The Plumber, Or Dog-Whistle Politics

2008-10-16T14:02:00.000-07:00

Was just thinking about Joe Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, and how his interaction with Obama was used in last night's Presidential debate.

Frankly, it disgusted me then, and it disgusts me now, because Joe the Plumber, Joe Six-Pack, and all the other Regular Joes out there are quite commonly used by right-wing politicians to advance a kind of right-wing populist ideology and rhetoric that superficially advances lower-middle-class and working-class people, but, when it comes right down to policies and implementation, benefits the upper classes.

To hear McCain, a scion of the American military leadership class and a long-time member of the American governing classes, mention "Joe the Plumber"(I think he only used Wurzelbach's proper surname once, and that was when he first brought Mr. Wurzelbach up in the debate), as often as he did during the debate pissed me the Hell off, because McCain isn't lower-middle-class or working-class in origin, nor, I will bet, does he spend a whole lot of time with so-called ordinary, reg'lar folks, when and if he can help it.

To me, it's the same kind of dog-whistle politics, as the McCain/Palin campaign's attacks on Obama for his connection, however tenuous, to William Ayres.

"Oooo, gotta watch out fer those lefty-pinko-commie-America-hatin'-Muslim terrorists, don'cha know(wink)???!!!"

Yeah, sure, right.

The fact is, if McCain, Palin and their ilk really love and admire the American middle and working classes, why the Hell have they either worked so hard to get out of those classes, and why do they pursue the kinds of ideas and policies they do.

Quite simple to me, really.

These people have no love, respect, admiration, etc, for Joe the Plumber, Joe Six-Pack, GI Joe, GI Joe, Fighting Man From Head To Toe, whatever one wants to call the so-called average American, except, perhaps, in the comfortably abstract.

Joe What's His Fuck is really more a source of votes, government and business revenue, and, in war-time, a source of cheap, readily expendable cannon fodder to these people, than anyone or anything valuable at all.

But, there are quite a number of so-called ordinary Americans, the Joe and Jane Six-Packs out there, who will fall for this each and every time an election comes 'round.

The reasons for this are various, and will go into them in the next essay-lette I post here.

For now, will sign off by saying that dog-whistle politics only work so long as the dogs come running to the whistle.

Be seeing you.

New York Times Article Link: "Sarah Palin and the Rape Kits"

2008-09-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

The following's a link to a New York Times Editorial Observer article by Dorothy Samuels, published on 25th September, 2008, which alleges that Sarah Palin, while serving as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, along with the town's police chief, Charlie Fannon, signed off of a policy in which rape victims were billed by the town's hospital for the cost of the rape kits used in investigating their cases.

While Palin apparently said nothing about this policy, Fannon, in an interview with Wasilla's local newspaper, "complained that the state was requiring the town to spend $5,000 to $14,000 a year to cover the costs. "I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer," the chief explained."

When the Alaska State Legislature heard about Wasilla's policy on billing victims for the rape kits, it passed a bill in 2000 killing that policy.

When I first read the article, I was incensed, and, in fact, have only gotten angrier still.

Whatever the reasons behind it, and, according to Ms. Samuels' article, there's speculation in the blogosphere that the billing policy is rooted in Ms. Palin's pro-life orientation, I won't speculate on what they might have been.

But, I would say that, generally speaking, this measure reflects the sort of penny-wise, pound-foolish attitude that are found in not only the town of Wasilla, or the state of Alaska, but, more broadly speaking, in much of the American West, including my home town and state of Nevada, the United States, and indeed, the English-speaking world.

Historically, there has been a general attitude in the English-speaking world that, unless a given problem is either hitting the rich and influential classes hard, or is so enormous that it absolutely has to be dealt with, of "We shall muddle through".

Combine that with the inevitable whining, and there's a lot of it, anytime any government programme, especially those intended for the poor and working classes and other marginalised groups, comes up, "But, it'll cost moooonnnneeeeyyyy!!!!", and I think one can see the pattern here.

The pattern can be summed up thusly, "Me first, and don't you DARE make me pay one cent of taxes for it!!!"

These attitudes, spawned by the kinds of social and economic attitudes that come out of both capitalism and of being a conquest society, and folks, outside of Merrie Olde England itself, the rest of the English-speaking world is made up of conquest societies, in which the countries' original inhabitants were conquered, subjugated or eliminated, and workers brought in by either fair means or foul, to provide the labour needed to build those polities as cheaply as possible, make for a kind of disgustingly arrogant, entitled mentality which, at its core, wants government services and money as much as the next person, but doesn't want to pay for any of it, whatsoever.

These attitudes, while found perhaps everywhere in the English-speaking world, are found most starkly in the US, though Australians are no slouches when it comes to this sort of arrogance either, and especially in the American South and West, including Alaska, where they are on greater and more open display than in either the North or Midwest.

Doesn't mean, BTW, that one can't find those attitudes in the latter regions of the US. It's just that in those societies, being more economically diversified and better developed in their social infrastructures, the competition for resources aren't quite as stark, and the attitudes that come with it not quite as dramatically displayed much of the time.

The economies of the Southern and Western portions of the US have traditionally been, although there has been a greater amount of industrial diversification in those regions in recent decades, traditionally based on either agriculture, including ranching, extractive industries, like mining or oil, or hospitality-based industries, like casino gambling.

These industries, and those at the top and upper middle levels of them, have generally prospered, and, in so doing, have amassed enough resources and power to obtain the kind of political and social positions that they'd not have had in more economically diverse parts of the world.

This means they have what is essentially a monopoly on political and social power in the regions they control, and everyone else can say what they like about it, but they're the ones in charge, and in many ways, overtly and subtly, most people in these regions go along with it, either out of hope of getting in on some of the action, fear of losing what they have, despair of ever changing the situation, or simply knowing only this situation and none other.

In turn, this means that local political, social and economic elites, especially in small towns like Wasilla, have both greater power and influence than they would otherwise have, but, at the same time, they still have to bow, scrape and truckle before the local, and, considering that many of these industries have been and are owned by individuals and companies from other parts of the world, outsider Lords Of Creation.

Not a happy situation to be in, sure. But, it's a lot happier than being on the very bottom, or close to, of these societies.

In the end, this means that such societies, and the individuals within them, are going to reflect those circumstances in their own ways, and, most of the time, the ideas, policies and actions made by most people in them are going to be to get as much as one can and to keep as much as one can, at everyone else's expense.

It is, in my opinion, this set of circumstances that ultimately lie behind policy decisions and implementations like Wasilla's charging rape victims for the cost of rape kits used in their cases, and it is frankly disgusting.

'Nuff said. The link's below. Please read and decide for yourselves, and be seeing you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/opinion/26fri4.html?em.

First Obama-McCain Debate Reactions

2008-09-26T21:02:00.001-07:00

Got through watching the first Presidential debates a little while ago.

Before I go any further here, three advisory points need to be stated: 1, am an Obama supporter, 2, missed the debate's first ten minutes, and 3, there were times during the debate that I got so excited/angry, what have you, that I missed small parts of the debate.

That said, and as much as I hate to say it, Folks, McCain in some areas came off the better in areas like tax policies, and in some of his points on various budgetary and militarily-related policies.

Obama really needed to bring up more specifics, not only in those areas, but overall, and, though he eventually began hitting back harder at McCain as the debate went on, at least at first, I thought he was still too much in the grips of the sort of Senate collegiality in his initial dealings with McCain.

McCain, on the other hand, had far less compunction about bringing up his opponent's lack of experience, judgement, not having been to Iraq for 900 days or so, and not at all to Afghanistan, and constantly repeated the phrase, "What Senator Obama doesn't understand," so much so in the latter case, that, even if I didn't like McCain or the Republican Party in general, I would have disliked him for being a smug, arrogant jerk, and I think that's what, in many instances, he came off as being.

McCain oft trumpeted his years of experience in the Senate, and, twice close to the debate's end(it may have been more than that), his experiences as a POW and Viet-Nam War veteran, and how they helped him shape policies towards veterans of that war and establishing diplomatic relations with Viet-Nam.

Both men, and Senator Obama himself admitted this, came off sounding very distressingly alike to me on issues like the recent Russian-Georgian conflict, and the need for nuclear power and "clean" coal as components in achieving energy independence.

Both favoured support for Mikhail Saakishivili's government and its actions towards South Ossetia, and for possible eventual Georgian and Ukrainian membership in NATO, while omitting the fact that it was a Georgian military offensive against South Ossetia that started the conflict, though McCain, in his mentioned praise of Saakishivili stated, though not explicitly, the sort of connections and support the Senator has for the man and his policies.

Obama, in an attempt to play a sort of catch-up with McCain on this issue, mentioned that he'd warned the Administration in April that there were Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, which, from what background info have acquired about the issue over the past four years, comes off as really being rather dumb, because there have been Russian, Georgian(until recently)and either South Ossetian or Abkhazian peacekeepers in those respective regions since at least the last bouts of serious fighting between the South Ossetians, Abkhazians and Georgians 4 years ago.

I can imagine whatever Secretary or Under-Secretary he approached at the State Department about this revelation raising an eye-brow, saying, "Really???!!! Well, we'll look into the matter," and then, after Senator Obama left, saying to him- or herself, "Stupid fuck."

Sorry if this is harsh, but that revelation on Obama's part didn't impress me in the slightest.

On the other hand, ultimately, McCain struck me as an experienced, yes, but also all too arrogant, man, who, in some areas, is still stuck in the ideologies and practises of the mid-20th Century, while Obama struck me as being a capable enough fellow in many areas, but one who really needs to forget the senatorial collegiality and hit McCain back, and hit him back hard and fast, with specific inconsistencies, gaffes and errors in McCain's record over the the past 26 years, though he did score somewhat in bringing up McCain's rendition of "Bomb Iran" at a political gathering fairly recently, I believe.

Obama, for all the charges his many detractors, including McCain in talking about Obama's Senate voting record, of him being some sort of liberal, radical wing-nut, came off as what I believe he essentially is, a mainly moderate to liberal, but mainly moderate, Democrat, whereas McCain came across as the sort of tough-talking, take-no-prisoners sort of Republican candidate that there's been so much of in this country since the 1950's at least.

To be honest, I was a John Edwards voter at my local Democratic Party primary caucus back in January of this year, and I tend, though my politics can be all over the place at times, depending on the issue and my given state of mind at any one time, and so, I tend to sit farther to the left than Senator Obama is and would be on many issues.

Also, being on Social Security Disability, Supplemental Security Income and Medicare, as well as, through the State of Nevada, Food Stamps and Medicaid, I worry about the sorts of policies, especially in light of the proposed financial bailout currently under discussion in Washington, and actions that will happen, especially under a McCain Administration, which, while it might not be identical in every respect to the current Administration's policies, or those of the Reagan and first Bush Admininistrations' with their stated animosity towards Social Security and other social programmes, might result in severe cut-backs or even elimination of, in one way or another, those programmes.

So, yes, I support Obama because, one, unlike Hilary Clinton, he has been a staunch critic of the Iraq War and its conduct, which I think he well maintained in the debate to-night, and two, because, while I would like to get off of Social Security if I can, I do not want to trade one form of poverty for another, much more insecure form of it, and that is what I fear might happen if McCain gets into the White House.

Sorry to get off the subject here, Folks, but I felt I had to say the above, so you know from where I stand.

Anyhow, that's it for me, for now, as ill-reasoned as it might be.

Will let you know more as I further reflect on this, and the other debates to come.

In the meantime, thanks for your kind attention and be seeing you.

Las Vegas Nevada Area Anti-Bailout Protests

2008-09-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

Thanks to notices that have received from Democrats. com and TrueMajority.org, have the address and time of one Las Vegas, Nevada-area anti-bailout demo, and said info can be seen immediately below. The spelling in the text below is reproduced from the original post on those sites.

Protest the tax money giveaway to Wall Street
September 25, 2008
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Stand with your neighbors and say NO Bush Bailout!
Directions

AT 7 ELVEN ON SUNSET AND VALLE VERDE NEXT TO LITTLE CAESARS AND ACROSS FROM CVS

For those of you viewing this from other parts of the Las Vegas Valley or from outside the Las Vegas Metropolitan Area, please go to either the appropriate page at Democrats.org, or to the following page at TrueMajority.org(they're the same, really)-http://truemajority.wiredforchange.com/o/8/t/107/event/search.jsp?distributed_event_KEY=5, and enter in your zip code to find out the address and time of the nearest anti-bailout demo near you.

Am going to check a Code Pink notice that received last night, and find out if that group has any similar events planned for to-day. When I find out, will post here.

If you can't make any of the demos, please re-post this info on your blogs, pass them along in e-mails to friends, etc.

Thanks for your attention, and be seeing you.

A Bulletin, A Video and A Link From A MySpace Friend Of Mine

2008-09-24T22:13:00.000-07:00

From my MySpace friend Rule 22 come this video from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and a link to his own site.

Please check out both, but especially check out Jon Stewart's hilarious takes on the Treasury Secretary's bailout plan, and Da Prez's analysis of the current economic situation.

Stewart and his writing staff have got both dead to rights, which, given the grimness of the current economic crisis, is actually quite sad.

Be seeing you.

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Rule 22
Date: Sep 24, 2008 5:43 PM

Jon Stewart fuckin rules

..

So I did some math and...
The $700,000,000,000 slated for the bailout works out to about
$2,325 per person or
$5,340 per tax payer

Invest in Rule 22 merchandise. Once the economy crashes Rule 22 shirts will be the new currency. Please pay in euros haha.

Two Presidential Debate Petition Site Addresses

2008-09-24T20:35:00.000-07:00

Just a quick shot here. For those of you out there who think the scheduled Presidential debate should continue on Friday, please head over to Demand The Debate.com and http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/economic_debate/?r_by=944-102472-gyWDVfx&rc=confemail, and sign the petitions urging Sens. Obama and McCain to do just that.

Yes, the economic situation is very bad.

But, at the same time, it's damned important that the American people hear from these candidates precisely what they intend to do about it, as well as what their respective administrations' economic policies would be, should either man get into the White House.

Finally, please feel free to pass these address along by any possible means.

Thanks for the time and trouble you taken to read this, and be seeing you again quite soon.

Going Off-Line For A Little Bit As Of To-Morrow

2008-06-22T16:42:00.000-07:00

Been having trouble with the OS on my computer's hard drive since Tuesday last, and, despite a few attempts at reinstalling it back onto the hard drive since, these problems are still on-going.

So, a computer-knowledgable friend of mine is coming over to my place to-morrow(don't know when he-ll be here yet), and will take the computer back to his place for examine and repair it.

That means will be off-line for the next two weeks while the examination and repairs are going on.

Now, I will try and access the net from some local public library computers during that time, to check e-mail, quickly pop in here and on some other social networking sites am a part of, and to, perhaps, leave some very quickly written progress up-dates on this matter, and to keep faith with y'all that I ain't ignoring or mad at any of ya, or that I've suddenly decided to turn into a complete dick overnight.

It's just that I might be able to only access the 'Net from my local library once or twice a week, that's all.

In the meantime, if you wish to leave messages, comments, etc, please do so. But, please keep in mind that I might not be able to immediately respond to them.

Doesn't mean I won't respond to 'em at all. Just means that I might be a bit slower than the average bear at getting back to you for a little while.

In the meantime, please take care of yourselves and yours out there, and hope everything in your lives is either doing better than well, or at least as well as the circumstances allow.

Be seeing you.

2008-06-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note here to let you know that have been big problems with my computer and its operating system for some time now, and especially since Tuesday last.

Hence, my prolonged absence here.

Am currently accessing the 'Net via an operating system on a CD given to me by an excellent friend of mine, who's also helping me work on repairing the damn thing.

Point is that am very limited right now in what I can and can't do on the 'Net, until such time as these problems are corrected in one form or another.

So,there probably won't be many posts here for a while.

Sorry about all this, and hope that those of you out there who look at this blog even on just the occasional basis will understand.

In the meantime, take care of yourselves and yours out there, and be seeing you once the computer and I are back up to full good working order, whenever that may be.

YouTube Cat Video: "Scottish Fold"

2008-06-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

Yet another YouTube cute cat video here, with this being from a Japanese YouTube poster,
Panda0000000, entitled "Scottish Fold", which features a beautiful Scottish Fold kitten being held up on display for the camera, causing much consternation and mewing on the kitten's part.

Anyhow, the kitten's just too damned cute for words. So, have a look for yourselves, hope you enjoy it, and be seeing you.

YouTube Video: "Techno Kittens"

2008-06-14T11:43:00.001-07:00

To-day being Caturday(when one lives with a cat or cats, every day's Caturday), here's a video I just found on YouTube, posted by a Vysokji called "Techno Kittens", which features a group of kittens sitting on a couch and apparently moving their heads in time with a techno dance tune.

Don't know if that's really the case, but, hey, there're kittens in the video, so what more do you want???

Enjoy and be seeing you.

AP YouTube Video: McCain Denounces Supreme Court Decision On "Enemy Combatants" Right Of Appeal In US Courts

2008-06-13T11:36:00.000-07:00

The following is an Associated Press video of an excerpt from a speech given by John McCain to-day, I believe, in which he denounces the Supreme Court for its decision to allow detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to appeal any decisions made by military tribunals in their cases there in US civilian courts.

For my money, this strikes me as being a bit of a turnaround from McCain's oft-stated positions on the treatment of "enemy combatants" detained there, and I think he both grossly over-simplifies and omits some facts about the Bush Administration's policies and practises there, as well as the fact that this Administration has made no bones about neither recognising the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war as applying to the detainees, or about the use of various forms of physical and mental abuse on them.

Anyway, enough editorialising on my part.

The video follows below, and, as always, be seeing you.

AP YouTube Video "Will Clinton's Base Jump To McCain?"

2008-06-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

From the Associated Press's YouTube channel comes this video, "Will Clinton's Base Jump To McCain??", which is about whether or not some of Senator Rodham-Clinton's supporters in the Democratic primary will jump over and vote for John McCain on 4th November.

One of the text comments, by one allencrider, states, "If you AP folks followed recent polls, you would have known that female democrats have moved to Obama in a big way. You're simply manufacturing news, and that sucks," and I think there may be some small merit to that contention.

On the other hand it's also entirely possible that some of Clinton's supporters, whatever their motivations for doing so, will vote for McCain come November, and it's a possibility for which I hope the Obama camp will prepare itself.

Be seeing you.

Link To BBC Footage Of Canadian PM Harper’s Apology

2008-06-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Just saw this YouTube video, posted by the BBC, of a short excerpt from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's public apology, before the Canadian Parliament, for the Canadian federal government's policy of taking away First Nations'(the Canadian name for their native peoples)children to be educated in religiously-run schools and given an education designed to assimilate them into the Canadian variant of European culture and customs, while destroying their native cultures and customs.

Know very little about PM Harper, save that he is much more of an American-style conservative than previous PMs have been, and, from what little I've read and heard of him and his policies, can't say that I care for either.

That said, and it's hard to judge from such a short excerpt as the one posted by the Beeb to their YouTube account, I would say that I think such an apology to our native peoples is well over-due down here as well, because we pursued similar policies towards native education at around the same time that the Canadian government did, and with identical aims.

Haven't read any articles detailing the whole speech and the various reactions of Canadian First Nations' individuals to it, so won't comment any further on it until I know more.

Unfortunately, the BBC's disabled the embed function in their YouTube account, so will enclose the link, http://youtube.com/watch?v=j5lu71livnU, so you can copy and paste into your Web browser window, press Enter, and go there and see it for yourselves.

Be seeing you, as always.

My Reply To A Form Letter From The AJWS

2008-06-11T15:28:00.001-07:00

I am subscribed to, and get the occasional on-line form letter from, the American Jewish World Service, which is an organisation that has devoted itself, and admirably so, to exposing, bringing to the attention of the world's elites and peoples over the past few years, and in putting pressure on the Sudanese government and Chinese governments about the atrocities and crimes being commited in Darfur.

That said, received a letter from them this afternoon, asking if I would sign an open letter to President Bush asking him not to attend the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Beijing come August.

Well, and it was really a split-second decision I made here, I decided not to, and enclosed a reply to this letter, the text of which follows below, stating why.

To be honest, I have considerable regard for China and its people, even if their government is a fairly beastly one, and, especially after the comments made by Ms. Sharon Stone about the 6th May earthquake in Sichuan province being a sort of karmic pay-back(mentioned in the response below)for the Chinese occupation of Tibet and its government's treatment of the Dalai Lama, a fairly low opinion of the Dalai Lama's Western supporters, such as Ms. Stone and Mr. Richard Gere, and you better believe that much of that reply was motivated by that dis-taste, as well as by the contentions I make below.

Should China be in Tibet and supporting the Sudanese government??? No, of course not.

But, neither should we be in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor should we be supporting some of the people we do around the world, either.

We here in the States don't often seem to see that much of the world, rightly or wrongly, resents our pompous lecturing about human rights, democracy and freedom, while feeling perfectly free to sell arms and give money to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and unconditionally supporting the State of Israel's policies and actions towards the Palestinians.

Whatever the motivations behind such resentments, there is at least a grain of truth in the perception that the US can often be a hypocritical bully on the world stage, and that's a pity, because, in the end, that grain only helps germinate more resentment and anger towards the US and its citizens, and allows many people who'd otherwise have little defensible reason for hating the US to happily do that.

One last quick note here, and that's the name of the head of the AJWS, whose name was signed at the original message's bottom is Ruth Messinger. The only reason I mention that, is because I address her as "Ms. Messinger" at the message's beginning, and I don't want people wondering, "Who the Hell is this Messinger woman??".

Now that you know that perhaps over-much bit of detail, on with the message, and be seeing you.

Ms. Messinger: With all due respect, am gonna have to dissent here on three grounds, the first of which is that President Bush, as he's made quite demonstrably clear over the years, will do what he wants, regardless of what others think and feel.

Hence, our involvement in the idiotic mess called the Iraq War, and for the horrors that we subject "enemy combatants" to at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. So, I rather doubt that he will pay much in the way of attention to any open letter, not even if sixty million people signed it.

Reason number two is, quite frankly, that such a refusal would, especially after the earthquake of 6th May, and Sharon Stone's stupid, pig-ignorant and utterly crass comments about Tibet and the earthquake being a sort of "karmic" pay-back for China's nasty little occupation of Tibet, be seen, not just by the Chinese government, but by many so-called ordinary Chinese, as another piece of beastly Yankee hypocritical swinishness, and I think they would have something of a point there. In the end, it would probably back-fire on us more than it would hurt the PRC, and especially its government, which, at least domestically, is rather more popular than it's been for quite some time now.

The third and final reason's, and please pardon the circular line of reasoning here, our own involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the bellicose noises that our Administration's been making about Iran for the past few years, have severely undercut whatever moral authority the US had before we went into those areas in the eyes of not just the Chinese government and people, but of much of the world as well.

Symbolic gestures like the one proposed in this open letter are all well and good, but, if the parties making them lack the kind of moral and other forms of credibility to back them up, the point is entirely lost.

If you were to reply to this message, you might say that such gestures are better than doing nothing at all. Most of the time, I'd agree with you.

But, in this case, I can't, for which I apologise.

Symbolic actions have their place, but, better by far, are actions that put direct pressure on the American, Chinese, Sudanese and other governments involved in the Darfur, as well as the United Nations and various Darfuri rebel groups, to end the fighting and atrocities in that region for good and all.

A lame-duck US President with a massively and deservedly tarnished reputation not attending the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics will have little to no effect on either Chinese policies towards Darfur and the Sudan, as well as Tibet, nor end the suffering on the ground in Darfur one iota.

Therefore, I must respectfully decline to go along with this campaign.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Yours, Donald Rilea.

YouTube Video: "An Engineer's Guide To Cats"

2008-06-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, am in kinda of a pissed-off mood to-day for reasons I won't go into here and now.

Suffice it to say that it's gonna take a few hours for me to work this crap through my system.

But, in the meantime, here's a YouTube video that I got from my friend Cheryl in one of her MySpace bulletins.

It's called "An Engineer's Guide To Cats", and was posted on that site by klusmanp.

I found it funny and charming, and, of course, the cats completely stole the show, as they always do.

Hope you enjoy this, and be seeing you.

Saturday Night At The Flicks: "Privilege"(1967)By Peter Watkins

2008-06-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

Well, it's Saturday night, and, even if you're not going out to the pictures, there's no reason why the pictures, or at least one of them, can't come to you.

So, am posting the trailer for, as well as a couple of scenes from, Peter Watkins' 1967 opus, "Privilege", starring Paul Jones, from the '60's Brit-Pop group Manfred Mann, and Jean Shrimpton, who, along with Twiggy, was one of the leading fashion models of that time.

Watkins started out making amateur films in Britain in the late 1950's, and by 1964, when his first film, "Culloden", a cinema-verite examination of the battle of Culloden Moor, the last battle of the second Jacobite Uprising of 1745, appeared on the BBC, he had first been an assistant director, then a director at the BBC.

His second and most famous film, "The War Game", in which Watkins used a combination of documentary interview and dramatic techniques to depict what the effects of a nuclear attack on Great Britain would be like, was actually banned by the BBC, from which it'd been made, not only from broadcast within Britain, but from world-wide television screens for twenty years after it was made, although Watkins himself was nominated for an Academy Award for the film.

"Privilege" was his third professional film, and his only major studio one, and is set in 1970 Britain, where a young pop singer, Stephen Shorter, played by Mr. Jones, who has accrued a great deal of influence among British young people, is essentially set up and used by religious and politically reactionary groups for their own ends.

The first clip from "Privilege" we'll see is the American theatrical trailer for the film, which was critically savaged in Britain, as was "The War Game", but garnered a fair amount of critical praise in the US at the time of the film's release. However, Universal Pictures only ran it in a few locations internationally, then pulled it from release, and it has seldomly been seen publicly since.

The next clip features Jones and the George Bean Group, singing "Jerusalem", a modernised(for the '60's, that is)version of the old Anglican hymn at a nationalist youth rally. Actually, Jones doesn't do any singing in this scene, but rather stands very silently on the platform in this scene.

The next clip, "Free Me", features an audio track of Mr. Jones singing one of the main songs from "Privilege", the aforementioned "Free Me", with a collection of album and other period photos providing visual accompaniment.

Sorry I don't have more in the way of scene or other clips from "Privilege" for you, but, considering just how spottily distributed the film was, and how seldomly it's been seen, or been available to the public, since its initial 1967 release, I find it extraordinary that any clips from it have surfaced on YouTube, from where I got these extracts.

Finally, here are a few links about "Privilege", its director, Peter Watkins, Paul Jones and Jean Shrimpton for you to check out, should you be so interested.

The IMDB entry for the film can be found at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062155/, its Wikipedia entry is at here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privilege_%28film%29, and its entry on Mr. Watkins' own web-site is http://www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins/privilege.htm, where you can find out more about the film's back-story from its writer and director.

Peter Watkins' IMDB entry's at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0914386/, his Wikipedia entry's here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Watkins, his British Film Institute's web-site page entry is http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/454916/, and, finally, Watkins' web-site address is http://www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins/.

You can find out more about his films, their availability, or lack thereof, in various regions of the world, and about his critique of what Watkins calls "The Monoform", which is the traditional narrative form of cinema and television story-telling, and which he attacks as being hierarchical, un-democratic in its form and relationship between producer and consumer, and engendering political and social passivity in its viewers.

Paul Jones's biography, filmography and television appearances can be found on his IMDB entry at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0428990/, while Jean Shrimpton's IMDB entry's at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0795398/.

In closing, am going to post a quartet of YouTube videos of a video talk given by Peter Watkins, intended for French viewers of his 1999 effort, "La Commune", about the Paris Commune of 1871, at a Soviet-era-themed park south of Vilnius, Lithuania in 2001.

While "Privilege" isn't mentioned in the talk, most of which is about his critique of "The Monoform", and some of which is about "La Commune", am posting these here, so you can get a better idea out of Mr. Watkins' own mouth about "The Monoform" and its effects on audiences, and to see where he's coming from for yourselves in a way that's direct and far better than any description of these ideas I could contrive.

Check these out, please, and, whether you agree or disagree with him on these issues, I hope you'll find his ideas at least somewhat intellectually stimulating.

Those videos will follow immediately below this.

In the meantime, be seeing you.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Official Pop: A Quick And Very Dirty Definition

2008-06-05T13:21:00.001-07:00

OK, you ask, what do I mean by "Official Pop"???

Well, I mean a kind of popular music, whether rock 'n' roll, what have you, that is both musically and politically un-threatening to a given political regime, and, if anything, upholds the values and standards of that regime, of whatever political stripe it may be.

For example, the body of musical works by East German groups of the 1960's, '70's and '80's like Oktoberklub, whose sound combines the folk rhythms of The Weavers with light choral pop musical ones practised by their roughly contemporary Western counter-parts like Up With People, or artists like Dean Reed, an expatriate American rock 'n' roller, who found far greater fame and fortune, first in Chile and Argentina in the 1960's, Italy in the early '70's, and, from the mid-'70's until his death in 1985, in East Germany and the Soviet Union, are a couple of examples of official pop from the old socialist bloc.

In the West, there are also tunes composed for the Movimento Nacional de la Falange Espanola y de las Jons, generally known as the Falange, that used light rock and pop rhythms in some of the songs intended for use by the Falange's youth wing, and, in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea, there has been, at least since Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, a kind of North Korean pop music, one description of which I've read on-line states that it's like South Korean pop music circa the 1970's or '80's.

I haven't really heard anything of South Korean pop music from that era, but it does sound at least a little like some of the Taiwanese pop music I heard when I listened to the Voice of Free China shortwave broadcasting station on my shortwave radio back in the 1980's, generally slow, soft, and almost sickeningly sweet in musical colours and tones.

However, the Taiwanese pop tunes I heard on the VOFC were a-political, which is one of the big differences between pop music produced under an authoritarian or totalitarian regime and official pop, in my book.

Official pop is political, no bones about it, and its musical and lyrical contents are designed to achieve a political purpose, whether it's shoring up support for a given country's governing classes and policies or attacking the enemies, foreign or domestic, of those.

Love songs, what have you, may exist in official pop, but, at least in the few examples of official pop from East Germany, North Korea, the Soviet Union and Franco's Spain that I've heard, politics comes front and centre, and that's that.

Protest tunes, like Bob Dylan's "Masters Of War", from other cultures are used by the governing party and its cultural apparatus to not only take a quick poke at its opponents, like the American government, but as a means, at least in the old socialist bloc, of affirming "socialist internationalism" and similar values upheld by the regime in question as well.

Official pop, at least in my definition, is also a product of the 1960's and later, when regimes of various stripes around the world found themselves having to cope with the influx and impact of British and American rock 'n' roll and other forms of popular music on their nations' young people, whether overtly or clandestinely, via tapes smuggled in from the West or from listening to Western radio broadcasts.

It was, and is, a means of taking the energy and rhythms of rock 'n' roll and other similar forms of popular music, and trying to harness and tame it, both musically and politically, into something that will serve a regime's political, ideological and social needs, while supposedly satisfying the wants and needs of a given country's youth for energy and excitement.

Sometimes, it is successful, as in the case of Dean Reed, who introduced rock 'n' roll, albeit a form of it that pleased the Soviet, East German and other Eastern European governing classes. Other times, it isn't.

Either way, the main reason for its artistic failure is that, in taming down and using rock 'n' roll and similar kinds of pop music to suit a party's or regime's needs, it takes much of the vitality out of it.

In my view, rock 'n' roll, punk(especially punk!!!), reggae, and other forms of pop music like those are essentially rebellious and oppositional(sorry to use that bit of academic duck-speak!!)to establishment values in whatever part of the world the musicians playing them may come.

Official pop, of whatever origin or form, is designed and used for precisely the opposite purpose by a country's establishment. But, in doing that, its users have bled out the energy that comes from rebellion found in many forms of popular music, and replaced it with a kind of tinned copy of that energy, but one that's greatly diminished.

In fact, I would dare say that official pop tunes don't generally even have the same kind of energy or power that a political party's or regime's old marching and other tunes have, because at least those tunes have a certain rousing quality that official pop generally lacks.

Well, that's my quick and dirty definition of official pop, and aren't you sorry you read this????

Whether you are or not, please go do something else more constructive, or at least a bit more fun, whether on- or off-line.

Until next time, be seeing you.

As I Would Not Be A Slave, I Would Not Be A Master

2008-06-05T06:34:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't have made a blog entry here, except for that have become in a debate in the comments section of a YouTube video on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict about, of all things, the Algerian War of Independence and the roles of the Algerian FLN(Front de Liberation Nationale, the main Algerian Arab independence organisation), the OAS(Organsation Armee Secrete, the main Algerian European anti-independence organsation)and the French.

Won't go into the details involving the Algerian War of Independence. If you wish to find out about it, please consult books like Alastair Horne's "A Savage War Of Peace"(which I have here at home, and which has been my main guide to this conflict for around twenty years now), or the various on-line resources about that war.

That said, I just want to say this; no nation or people has the right to dominate another, for any reason.

This goes for the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Russians in Chechnya, the Chinese in Tibet and Xinjiang, the Indonesians in West Irian, and so on and so forth.

This also goes for the Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan who make up the bulk of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban fighters and supporters, the Arabs in the Sudan and Mauritania, and any other peoples that seek to, by weight of numbers or force of arms, impose their beliefs, customs, business practises, and other ways of living upon their neighbours.

When a nation or people engage in such activities, it doesn't reflect the best aspects of their societies and cultures, but the very worst.

It's one thing to trade with, have cultural exchanges and diplomatic relations, and to interact with other peoples in various peaceful, non-invasive manners.

It's quite another to try and shove those same exchanges down another's throat, and call it progress.

The Soviets attempted it in Afghanistan, as they did throughout Eastern Europe, and, in the end, it back-fired badly on them.

The Egyptians, Assyrians, Hittites, Macedonians, Romans, British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Germans, Italians and Japanese, among many others, tried it at various times in their histories.

For a time, sometimes a quite lengthy one, such powers have been able to dominate and hold onto large territories and control large numbers of subject peoples.

But, in the end, whether through external assault or internal pressures and weaknesses, those empires fell apart.

Mind you, they have often left long-standing cultural influences behind in their former territories.
But, their political, social and economic control of those territories is either finished, or, as in the case of the former British and French colonies, considerably diminished from what it once was, although the French continue to maintain a close relationship with many of their ex-colonies, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Either way, the domination of one people by another, while it may bring some benefits at various points to the subject population, is about the systematic control and exploitation of that people, and, more importantly, of the territory in which they live, and the resources it has.

It is also, in my opinion, an incredible waste of time, talent, resources, energy and lives that could have been better employed in making their own lands far better places to live.

Call me naive here, but this is what I believe, and I also believe that human history would be a generally happier one if more peoples had decided to either peacefully interact with their neighbours, or, if not so inclined, stayed at home and lived within their own means.

But, they didn't, and it is the consequences of those decisions, some made only a few months or years ago, others centuries or even millennia ago, that we are living with to-day.

However, we can, and do, have the choice not to repeat the same mistakes, or at least the same KIND of mistakes, as our forbears in future.

It seems to me that it is either that, or remain locked in at least one of the various cycles of domination, exploitation, and eventual reaction to, and overthrow of, that domination, with the next cycle afterwards being started by one of the formerly dominated peoples.

Everyone has their excuses for engaging in such acts, but none of them, particularly when compared with their actions, holds up very well at all.

Am unsure if this is an exact quote from Abraham Lincoln, but will leave you with this anyway, "As I would not be a slave, I would not be a master."

Be seeing you.

A Pair Of Notes From The Democratic Candidates

2008-06-03T23:39:00.001-07:00

Just checked my Hotmail in-box a little while ago, and found, among the usual junk, these two on-line form letters from the Obama and Clinton campaigns respectively.

Note the folksy, yet artificial, style of the wording in these, thanking me for achievements and inspiration that I never provided either candidate, as I didn't work for, nor provide inspiration, advice, nor anything else to them during their fight for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Me, I was an Edwards supporter and delegate, one of four such, at my neighbourhood caucus back in January, and switched over to Obama only because there weren't enough Edwards' supporters there to make up a quorum.

That was that, and haven't been active since, to be honest.

So, I find any form letter in which I am thanked for efforts and contributions I didn't make to be risible, to say the least.

I won't presume to say I know what's going on the candidates' heads at this moment, but I know what's going on in mine, and that's the feeling of relief that that particularly ugly little bit of sordidness is now over.

Now, on to the next!!!!! Ohhhhh, boy!!!!

Senator Obama's and Senator Rodham-Clinton's letter texts follow directly below this. Please read 'em and decide for yourselves what you make, or not, of 'em.

Be seeing you.

Donald --

I'm about to take the stage in St. Paul and announce that we have won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

It's been a long journey, and we should all pause to thank Hillary Clinton, who made history in this campaign. Our party and our country are better off because of her.

I want to make sure you understand what's ahead of us. Earlier tonight, John McCain outlined a vision of America that's very different from ours -- a vision that continues the disastrous policies of George W. Bush.

But this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past and bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

It's going to take hard work, but thanks to you and millions of other donors and volunteers, no one has ever been more prepared for such a challenge.

Thank you for everything you've done to get us here. Let's keep making history.

Barack

(Author's note: In the original text, there was a large red button marked "Donate" in white letters directly below this)

Dear Donald,

Over the course of this campaign, I have seen the promise of America in your courage and character, your energy and ingenuity, and your compassion and faith.

Your spirit has inspired me every day in this race. While I traveled this country talking about how I wanted to help you -- time and again, you reached out to help me. To grab my hand or grip my arm, to look me in my eyes and tell me, don't quit, keep fighting, stay in this race for us. There were days when I had strength enough for the both of us -- and on the days I didn't, I leaned on you.

This has always been your campaign, and tonight, there's no one I want to hear from more than you. I hope you're as proud as I am of what we've done and that you'll take a moment to share your thoughts with me now at my website.

I want to congratulate Senator Obama and his supporters on the extraordinary race that they have run. Senator Obama has inspired so many Americans to care about politics and empowered so many more to get involved, and our party and our democracy are stronger and more vibrant as a result.

Whatever path I travel next, I promise I will keep faith with you and everyone I have met across this good and great country. There is no possible way to thank you enough for everything you have done throughout this primary season, and you will always be in my heart.

Sincerely,
Hillary
Hillary Rodham Clinton

More On "The Intruder"

2008-06-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

Am watching, or rather, listening to, a copy of "The Intruder", which I discussed in my last entry, as it's closing up, and here are a few, pretty raw thoughts on the picture.

The film is pretty powerful indeed, though marred by a few flaws.

William Shatner's performance as Adam Cramer, the traveling right-wing agitator, is fairly good, and we get a fairly nuanced portrait of a kind of amoral young man(Shatner was 31 or 32 years old at the time "The Intruder" was made), who sells his gospel of racial hatred, just like a traveling salesman or an itinerant preacher would sell their respective goods, though there are times, particularly at the film's climax, when we see a bit of the over-acting for which he would later become infamous.

The other cast members, whose names I didn't catch, also give a generally good calibre of performance, albeit the style of acting found in "The Intruder" is of a much more hyper-emotional type than to-day's.

Perhaps one of the most interesting features of "The Intruder" is the struggle that the town's newspaper editor undergoes with his conscience throughout much of the film over his very mixed feelings about the integration of the town's high school.

We see this struggle within him from the film's start, and, while the editor eventually ends up, rather predictably, on the integrationist side, what makes this struggle work for me is that, as he tells his wife in one scene before the film's climax, he really doesn't know why he feels the way he does.

Why I find that interesting is because I've come to believe that, while all of us, including Yours Truly, all have our reasons for believing and acting on our beliefs, there is also, at the most unconscious levels of our minds, a certain inarticulate sentiment, what have you, that helps propel us, or not, into action.

While much of "The Intruder" will seem a bit creaky and dated to most modern film-goers(the ideological fire-brand who turns out to be a louse, the last-minute confession by the white girl who's accused one of the African-American high school students of rape, and the agitator's exposure), the reason I think it still packs at least something of a punch is because, while many of the sentiments shown by many of the European-American townspeople in the film are now stated differently and more covertly than in 1962, those sentiments, as some of the logic and reasoning exhibited by some of Sen. Rodham-Clinton's supporters, as well as by portions of the right-wing media, show, they have by no means died out in American society and culture.

If anything, the racial, ethnic and cultural picture of America has grown more complex than at the time "The Intruder" was released.

But, then again, perhaps, it is, to a degree, that our view of America's racial, ethnic, religious and other forms of diversity has become much more sophisticated than in 1962.

America, like its neighbours throughout the hemisphere, always was something of a complex racial, ethnic, religious and social mix, and it has really been only in the last 40-odd years that the American mass media and educational system have really begun to acknowledge that, however grudgingly and half-heartedly at times.

At the same time, there are still many Americans out there who retain the older view of being an American as meaning being of European ancestry, exclusively English-speaking, upper- or middle-class, and either Jewish or Christian(BTW, there is a fair amount of Jew-baiting used by Shatner's character to stir up the small town mob early on in the film, which is something I've not noted in the very few other comments I've seen on "The Intruder"), and not all of these people are all middle-aged or elderly, nor are they all to be found exclusively in Radical Right groups, like the various branches of the Ku Klux Klan or Nazi-Skinhead groups.

Likewise, the race-baiting going on in this country doesn't solely come from the European-American side of the aisle, as some of the Reverend Wright's or Father Pfleger's recently brought to light on YouTube have shown.

Add on to that, the growing inter-racial tensions and violence between Latinos and African-Americans in various parts of the US, including Los Angeles and parts of my home town, and one can see that a tremendous amount of work still must be done in this country in terms of inter-racial relations.

There has been considerable progress, especially legally, in American inter-racial relations since "The Intruder's" first release date.

But, to repeat myself yet again, there is still a very long way to go indeed, and, especially because we are undergoing the stage of changing people's thoughts and attitudes toward each other, which is really the hardest part of any cultural change, there are no guarantees that we may not fail in that attempt, and do ourselves great damage as a result.

That is, I think, still quite possible, though not inevitable. It is only if we let it.

Be seeing you.

"The Intruder" Or, Captain Kirk Goes Race-Baiting

2008-06-02T17:42:00.000-07:00

In light of some of the race-baiting that has been going on between some partisans in the Clinton and Obama camps in the last two months or so, I think it's only entirely appropriate to exhibit this YouTube clip of the trailer for the 1962 Roger Corman film, "The Intruder", which starred William Shatner as Adam Cramer, a young agitator for the far-right "Patrick Henry Society"(probably based by the film's screenwriter, Charles Beaumont, who adapted it from his novel, on the John Birch Society), who arrives in the fictional, small southern town of Caxton, where he starts agitating the townsfolk against school integration, and, at least for a while, has his way, in more ways than one.

This film is one of the very few Roger Corman films that ever lost money at the box office, and, in fact, was subsequently re-released under a few different titles, such as "Shame" and "I Hate Your Guts!!".

Have only seen the trailer, which, along with scenes from the film, are available on YouTube, as well as from the Internet Archive, under the title "Shame", but it looks pretty good to me, thus far.

Have down-loaded the Internet Archive version, and will include the web page address after the clip, so you can go there, and either view or down-load it for yourselves.

Anyhow, here comes the clip.

Now, as for where you can find "The Intruder" or "Shame" on the Internet Archive site, here's the page address, http://www.archive.org/details/shame_ .

If you want to find out more about the film and its origins, here are the IMDB and Wikipedia page addresses devoted to it, at, respectively, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055019/combinedcomment, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intruder_%281962_film%29.

You can also find a video trailer for "The Intruder", with commentary on the film, at its page on Trailers From Hell at http://www.trailersfromhell.com/trailers/56?auto=1, and, if you want to buy the DVD of the flick, you can go to Roger Corman: The Official DVD Website at http://video.movies.go.com/rogercorman/coll_special.htmlintruder, and order it from there.

Yes, American society and culture have changed considerably since "The Intruder" was first released 46 years ago, but, in some very fundamental ways, especially regarding race and its role, there is still a very long way to go.

Be seeing you.

A Tryptich Of Sarah Silverman Videos

2008-06-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

Recently down-loaded some Sara Silverman videos from YouTube, and decided, while am listening to the soundtrack from one of them on my Real Player, to share some of these with you, as am busting a gut laughing while seeing, or rather, listening to, them.

So, here we go.

From the 2007 Video Music Awards, comes Ms. Silverman's spectacular diss of Ms. Paris Hilton.

That video was posted to YouTube by "ParisHiltonMusicFan"(!!!!).

The next video, "The Porn Song", was posted to YouTube by one "SnatchSnack".

The third and last video is her(admittedly, hadn't heard of this until a day or so ago)infamous little music video, "I'm F&@ing Matt Damon", posted to YouTube by "SwagDogDotCom".

Anyhoo, there you go. Hope you enjoy them, and try not to fall over when you're laughing at these.

Be seeing you.

A Quartet Of YouTube Cat Videos

2008-06-01T15:16:00.001-07:00

My MySpace friend Cheryl was kind enough to re-post a video featuring three kittens watching tennis from YouTube.

So, I went over there and found the video, plus a couple more such videos, and am posting 'em here for y'all to see for yourselves.

The first's the original video, from a Japanese YouTube video contributor called "CatteryAkubi".

The second, from "bregman1155" is "????Tennis Cats-"Le Freak" Remix", in which the above video is set to the old disco tune, "Le Freak", and which works amazingly well, I think.

The third video, from "MemeMolly" is "TokenMemeChannel17Like", and features a group of young people, mainly girls, moving their heads back and forth as if watching a tennis match, until they break up laughing.

This video, like the one above it, was posted as a response to the original video on the top.

The fourth and final YouTube video entry here is from one "calwhite", and is simply entitled, "Cats Watching Tennis", in which a quintet of kittens are moving their heads back and forth watching something off-camera, though it's never disclosed just what it is.

There's your Sunday cat-video fix. Now, run along, go outside and play, or do something else entirely un-constructive with your Sunday. As always, be seeing you.

While You Were Waiting....

2008-06-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

Well, Folks, am back after a period of around a little over seven months since last I posted here.

Part of that was due to the active blogging I'd been doing on my MySpace blog, part of it was due to me being a lazy thing, and a very large part of it was due to two computer hard drive melt-downs back in late November of last year, and late March of this year, which knocked me off-line for quite a while.

Have been back on-line, since a month ago come 3rd June, and have been meaning to get over here and start posting, or at least re-posting, some of the blog entries that have composed on my MySpace blog since then.

Well, below are a selection, re-published somewhat out of order, as you will see, with the first part of an action figure story I originally published on MySpace back on 3rd March, 2008, to lead 'em off.

Now that I've published it here, this takes away whatever remaining excuse I've to procrastinate on getting Part Two of the story written and published, doesn't it???

You bet it does.

Anyhow, sorry to have gone for so long.

Hope you enjoy this selection of entries, and, as always, be seeing you.

The Orphan: A Pacifica Action Figure Story, Pt. 1

2008-06-01T06:41:00.000-07:00

The time was about 2:30 going on 3:00 PM, to judge from the sun's position in the cloudy mid-November Southern California sky, and the body's rays shone somewhat feebly on the Southern California coastline, and, so it seemed, on a one very small individual making his way across a seemingly endless expanse of grass and weeds in a field on that very coast.

His name was Christopher Triumph, a rather ordinary, brown-haired, brown-eyed, Timeless Collection GI Joe from the very ordinary southern Pacifican town of Averageburg, and, up to about two years ago, his life was that of a very ordinary citizen of that locality.

He'd been the owner-operator of a small auto repair shop there, been married to a perfectly ordinary, but an absolute goddess in his eyes, raven-haired, 82nd Airborne GI Jane named Mary, settled down and, took in and raised three newbie figures, two Classic Collection Joes, and a blonde 82nd Airborne Jane, and it pretty much seemed that all of them would go on living the same sort of ordinary lives that they had been.

All that changed when Pacifica was attacked by its rival collection of Centralia, from which the former had separated in April, 2002, in the early morning hours of 28th April, 2007, only a few hours after the Pacificans finished celebrating the 5th anniversary of their independence.

Like most of the other able-bodied figures in Averageburg, Christopher hurriedly put on his Pacifican National Guard uniform(in his case, a 21st Century Vietnam Platoon Leader olive drab uniform, and M1 steel helmet), put up his webbing, said a hurried farewell to Mary and the kids, shouldered his M-14 rifle, and went away to war.

It never would have occurred to him to even think about declining to go, because of the situation at hand, and also, because everyone else he knew, except those, like Mary, who had either vital jobs or pressing family responsibilities, or who were either physically or mentally unable to go, were going, so off he went.

No need, Christopher thought as he hurried to the local Guard depot, to let everybody else down by not doing his part.

Not his neighbours, friends, family, community and country. No way, no how, was that gonna happen.

And, though he never would have admitted it to anyone, especially himself, no way in Hell was he gonna let himself down by sitting out the biggest show to ever hit town.

Christopher and his unit got to see and act in that very show within a few hours of mobilisation, and played their parts well enough, if not outstandingly so, over the hours and days that made up the 10-day long Centralian-Pacifican War.

They had been, if Christopher remembered correctly, in around half-a-dozen fights and skirmishes of varying sizes and degrees, had lost 3 or 4 soldiers dead, twice that number of wounded, and about half that total missing.

He'd done his duty well enough. Sure, Christopher received no commendations, awards or medals for his performance during the war, but he'd also never shirked an order or failed to hold up his end of whatever needing doing, when it had to be done, and that was good enough for him.

As for killing bozos, being scared and all the rest of that happy horse-shit that folks who've never been in combat ordinarily ask about, and those kind of questions just irritated Christopher to no end, he could maybe, just maybe, remember shooting at and perhaps hitting a couple of customised Dragon figures in Iraq War US Army uniforms during one fight, maybe killing or wounding 2 or 3 more with a hand grenade he chucked in their general direction during another(The reason Christopher wasn't sure about that particular incident was that, after he pulled the grenade's pin and tossed the explosive, he dived flat on his face, as any sensible soldier would, and hugged his little portion of Mother Earth in the shelter of a curve in the ground. As he didn't hear any sounds coming from his targets, and certainly got no more trouble from them, after the grenade's detonation, he paid them no more mind, and quickly moved on from there), and maybe a few others in some of the other actions he was in.

There was only one figure that Christopher knew for sure he'd killed, and that was a customised Blue Box figure in an Iraq War US Marine outfit, whom he'd seen getting the better of Elmer Fiedelbaum, a GI Joe Classic Collection Dwight figure, an assistant manager at the local supermarket back home, who was a casual acquaintance of Christopher's, and a regular enough guy to hang out every now and then.

The soldier had Elmer pinned on his back like an awkward turtle, and had his Ka-Bar combat knife out and ready to plunge into whatever part of the turtle's torso came most handy.

Christopher was about 4 inches away from the struggling pair, which was too close for him to plug Elmer's assailant without possibly hitting Elmer in the bargin. But, with just a little effort, he could get over there and fix the bastard with the bayonet at the end of his M-14.

Quickly running over to where the struggle between Elmer and his opponent was about to end unfavourably for the former, Christopher kicked the Marine hard on his right side, knocking him off of Elmer, and onto his back.

With the barrel of his M-14 not more than an inch or two from the downed Marine's face, Christopher quickly decided to forget about using his bayonet, and simply shot him between the eyes, killing him instantly.

The only thing that he could remember about his victim's face, was the look of absolutely sheer dumb surprise the Marine had on it, like what a luckless dog or cat which had been run over by a car might have.

Christopher stared at that surprised face, now doomed to look like the biggest Pore Dumb Fuck in all the armies, organic or toy, that had ever existed in the history of the world, until his corpse was collected, revived and given a new identity, for what seemed to him to be about a minute or so, but was probably more like 5 or 10 seconds, then turned away from it and helped Elmer to his feet.

"You OK???", Christopher asked the former soldier-turned-temporary turtle, after the latter was on his feet, to which Elmer replied after drawing in a hard breath, "Yeah. Sure. Thanks."

"No problem", Christopher said. Then a corporal from their squad ran up, yelling at them to stop standing around with their thumbs up their asses like a couple of Kansas City faggots(Oddly enough, the only knowledge the corporal, who'd never been outside of Averageburg in his life before the war, had of Kansas City faggots, was as an insult that Slim Pickens' character in "Blazing Saddles" had used on one of his cohorts in that film, which yon corporal had seen on late-night TV sometime ago. Other than that, he knew about as much about Kansas City faggots and their goings-on, as he did the Man in the Moon's), and get moving to another part of the battlefield where the fighting was particularly hot.

Christopher and Elmer looked at each other a second, grunted affirmatively to the corporal, and, after Elmer hurriedly put his helmet back on his head, and picked up his rifle, followed the corporal and 3 or 4 other of their squad-mates in the general direction of the latest skirmishing, leaving the Pore Dumb Fuck of the Universe alone with his eternal surprise and dismay.

Sometimes, Christopher would see the Marine's face in dreams, and, every time he saw it, he didn't know whether to laugh his head off or scream, or both.

After the war and his return home, Mary would occasionally be woken up by the soft mix of chuckling and yelling Christopher made whenever he saw that Marine's face, and would ask him when he woke up afterwards, if he'd had a nightmare, and, if so, what it was about.

Christopher's response, which was generally about the same every time she, or anyone else, really, asked him about something that was bothering him, was, "Nothing I can't handle, honey," and leave it at that.

He didn't really like talking about his feelings, especially hard or unpleasant ones, with other figures.

Christopher wasn't that way, had never been that way, and sure as Hell hadn't been raised that way, either.

If other folks wanted to talk about how they felt, good for them, Christopher thought, but rarely said, but not him.

He'd learned early enough on that life's hard, sometimes it hurts, disappoints, saddens, or does something else bad to you, and that the best remedy for it wasn't to be a whiny little wimp, sniveling and carrying on like a Merrill-damn theatre queen(Christopher had known a couple of those in school), but to suck it up, suck it in, and move on from there, the quicker the better.

Talking about even a little of the bad shit that happened to you simply got in the way of doing that.

So, , that's exactly what Christopher did, just as he was moving on along the seemingly endless great grassy plain on that mid-November's day. Moving on, ideally to someplace better and fast.

-To be continued. End of Part One.

More Info About The Drumming Out Of Alex Barton

2008-06-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

You may remember that I posted a blog entry on Saturday last about how a Port Lucie, Florida kindergarten teacher, one Wendy Portillo, allowed her students to vote a 5 year-old boy, Alex Barton, who has Asperger's Syndrome, out of her classroom.

Well, here's the contact info for Ms. Portillo's superiors, courtesy of the Autism Self-Advocacy Network, and a MySpace friend of mine, "kafecat", who posted this info on her blog a few days back.

Contact info:

*Morningside Elementary School Principal:*
Mrs. Marcia Cully
cullym@stlucie.k12.fl.us
(772) 337-6730

*St. Lucie County Schools Superintendent: *
Michael J. Lannon
4204 Okeechobee Road
Ft. Pierce 34947-5414
Phone: 772/429-3925
FAX: 772/429-3916
e-mail: lannonm@stlucie.k12.fl.us

*St. Lucie County School Board Chair:*
Carol Hilson
772-519-0397
HilsonC@stlucie.k12.fl.us

*Vice Chair:*
Judith Miller
772-528-4545
MillerJ@stlucie.k12.fl.us
**

Regards,
Ari Ne'eman
President
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network
1101 15th Street, NW Suite 1212
Washington, DC 20005
http://www.autisticadvocacy.org
732.763.5530

Please be sure to keep the tone of your message to them as respectful as possible, and please cc the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network into the messages when you send them, so they can track how many are being sent regarding this matter.

Am also including a link to kafecat's blog entry on this, so you can see it for yourselves, at http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=78853530&blogID=399324355&Mytoken=F27DB57C-A88D-4136-9D315B3835E76E1A110795966.

Hope these prove to be of interest to you, and, if you can, please contact the Morningside Elementary and St. Lucie County Schools and School Board officials at the e-mails listed above.

Thanks, and be seeing you.

A Trio Of YouTube Videos

2008-06-01T06:38:00.000-07:00

In my last entry here, I mentioned my great appreciation for the Internet and the amazing variety of videos on it.

Well, am gonna give y'all some samples of what I meant.

The first one was posted to YouTube by a Dutch YouTube contributor called Yolan59, who has quite the collection of old "Carol Burnett Show" sketches, and, it was while viewing the following sketch that I learnt, in the accompaning information box, that Harvey Korman died yesterday at the age of 88.

So, this sketch, "The Old Folks" featuring the late Mr. Korman and Carol Burnett goes up here in homage to a fine comedic actor, who is now no longer among us.

For a bit of better news from the other side of the world, here comes a news article, posted by Nepal News on 28th May, about the celebrations going on in Nepal, now that the Nepalese monarchy, which reigned for 240 years, has been officially abolished and replaced by a federal democratic republic. Congratulations and the best of luck to the Nepalese people.

Finally, there's this video entry, "The Two Talking Geese" from an American YouTube poster who calls herself AliceAngel7, which features her two geese, Snooky and Randall, communicating with each other by honking, rather than the usual fighting that goes on between, according to her.

This is a charming little bit of animal footage, which was made as a response to the "Two Talking Cats" video that ran on YouTube some months ago, and is, I think, an appropriate way to end this entry, and help get your day off to a good start.

Please enjoy, and be seeing you.

The Internet and Internet Video: 2 Appreciations

2008-06-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

Y'know, for all of the junk, or at least just plain mediocrity, that I sometimes see here in my little corner of the 'Net, one of its features that I just plain love to death, especially after having got a cable connection last year, is videos, and especially YouTube and similar video-sharing services.

For me, this has been a chance to see and down-load(via RealPlayer 11)videos of films by film-makers like Peter Watkins, Nagisa Oshima, Jiri Trinka, Shuji Terayama, and many others, whether famous or obscure, whose works I'd only read about back in my teens and twenties, or had never heard of nor seen at all.

It's not that there aren't foreign and independently-made American films in Vegas. Some theatres show them, and there are some groups here(NOTBAD being the main one of which I can currently think)that have once-weekly free showings of such flicks.

But, being as generally house- and neighbourhood-bound as I currently am, I don't often go to such places.

I know I need to get out more, but that's a subject for another day.

Thanks to the technology of Internet video, I can see, whether whole or in excerpts, art films, or any other type of film for which I care to see, on-line, at my leisure, as well as vintage tv programme episodes, documentaries, and short and feature films from just about every period of film history, and I love it.

Mind you, there's a lot of junk out there, to be sure, and not every film or video I see on-line is a masterpiece of High Art, nor should they be.

But, that's par for the course in just about every type of human endeavour, I think.

There's a small number of truly great pieces of product, slightly larger numbers of very good or at least satisfactory ones, a much larger number of mediocre products, and, of course, a pretty larger amount of just plain awful material that are produced by human minds and hands every day of the year, and that goes for film and video in all periods of their short histories as it does for any other kind of human enterprise.

Nonetheless, it is the ACCESS to film, video, sound and other sorts of media, as well as to sites dealing in information of all sorts on various topics that I prize the most.

Just knowing that I can, by entering in a name or topic into a search engine, pressing the Enter key, and, 3 quarters of a second or so later, get back a variety of results to my query, in my own home, is just a marvel to me.

Yes, I can take it for granted, as does just about everyone who has regular access to it.

But, there are times, like now, when I realise just how powerful both the technology and institutions of the Internet and the World Web Web are, and what joys I have in being able to wander around them, peeking here and snooping there, at sites that strike my fancy.

The 'Net, and my computer in general, have become a major, if not the sole, means of self-expression for me, and whenever deprived of them, as I was at various points during the past 7 months, I can make do with whatever available media I've at hand, but it isn't the same.

Quite a statement coming from a former computer-phobe like myself.

But, that was before I discovered the Internet 11 years ago.

Now, it is a very important part of my life, and I keenly appreciate it.

Anyhow, that's it for now.

Be seeing you.

Rant: Sharon Stone, The China Earthquake, And YouTube.

2008-06-01T06:34:00.000-07:00

Just got through watching some thirty(!!!!)videos about Sharon Stone's comments at the Cannes Film Festival that I'd down-loaded from YouTube over the past several days, and it is amazing to me the levels of passion that some off-the-cuff remarks from one of Hollywood's leading bubble-heads can inspire, including within myself.

Most of the comments I saw came from quite understandably upset, outraged and angry young Chinese who were revolted by the sheer callousness of Ms. Stone's remarks, but there were also a few European Americans, one African American, and a Canadian gentleman of European descent who also expressed their outrage at her comments in various forms.

Additionally, there were also some YouTube video programmes, like The Young Turks and What The Buck, hosted by one Michael Buckley, as well as some clips from Fox News, Celeb TV, Hollyscoop.com and a Hong Kong television channel to whose reporter at Cannes Ms. Stone made her remarks, that I viewed, as well as a few videos lauding Ms. Stone posted by pro-Tibetan YouTube members like mayyoubekind, which mainly consisted of the same collection of Fox News, BBC, and other Western news sources' article clips about the negative publicity that China has received in the Western media in the past several months.

I also saw quite a few text comments accompanying these videos, most of which were anti-Stone and pro-Chinese, or at least outraged by Ms. Stone's comments, as well as a smaller number of pro-Tibetan and anti-Chinese comments posted by YouTube contributors like mayyoubekind, whose YouTube nom de guerre needs a bit of a change, because his or her comments certainly weren't kind at all.

So, what's the up-shot of all this, you ask??? Good question.

Here's the answer: aside from one young Chinese gentleman, who identified himself as "Adam" and whose two YouTube videos on the subject can be seen at http://youtube.com/watch?v=2pesCrT1d9c&feature=related and at http://youtube.com/watch?v=7EAUZr8WTrY, and who only wanted Ms. Stone to apologise for her remarks without indulging himself in personal attacks upon her in any way, the other responses were very angry, with some of the male respondents describing her as a "whore", "bitch" etc.

BTW, when and if you do watch Adam's videos, you will see, as I just did, some comments mocking his poor grasp of English grammar and pronunciation. I will say that both need a lot of work, but that is, I believe, a minor point compared to what he has to say on the subject.

I had to go into my bookmarks(now, you know my dirty little secret when it comes to writing these articles)a few minutes ago to find the web page addresses to display here, and, when I came on the link to the first video by Adam, I saw a loathsome little comment made by a YouTube member named NewEnglandPatChic, a 31 year-old American, which I will now reproduce in full-"China needs to deal with the fact that we are a FREE Country and we do have Freedom of Speech. She shouldn't have to appologize for speaking her mind. She didn't hurt you physically. My Mother always said "If it doesn't apply let it fly" So grow up, put on your big boy panties, slap a pad on take your midol and stop whining!
Bad things do happen to bad people...Your people are barbaric dog, cat and baby murders. All those kids that died would turn out the same way, so was it really a loss??".

I don't know if this contributor is either male or female, though, from the two comments I saw posted on his or her Channels page, I think that NewEnglandPatChic is a woman.

Either way, the comments made by this person are sickeningly callous, rude, mean-spirited and downright racist, and I am sorely tempted to go back to that video, and make the meanest-spirited, nastiest and most vicious reply I can to this.... "person".

On the other hand, I probably won't, out of the self-centred desire not to soil myself and whatever reputation I may have by letting this twit utterly have it, and but good.

This brings me to a point that have been trying to get to for some time now, and that is remarks like Ms. Stone's, NewEnglandPatChic's, mayyoubekind's and some of the other Tibet-supporters, or at least China-bashers do their causes no God-Damned good whatsoever, and, worse still for them, make themselves look like the mean, vicious, callous, hypocritical sons-of-bitches they are.

I don't know much about the Dalai Lama, but, I can only say that, if I were in his place, I would be furious with Ms. Stone, and I would let her know that in the kind of language that Hollywood production executives and drill instructors are infamous for using.

Why??? Because, for one, controversies like this tend to take the main focus off of the central topic in all this, China's occupation of Tibet, two, it makes the Tibetan cause and its supporters look like a bunch of marble-headed ninnies and dunderheads, who talk a great game of being loving and forgiving souls, but who are really hypocritical, mean-souled little shits with brains of suet and hearts of purest tin, and, three, they can create the kind of public back-lash against one's cause within the space of a heartbeat, or maybe just a little longer than that.

Most importantly, it's the kind of, as one YouTube respondent critical of Ms. Stone's remarks put it, " a kind of Westboro Baptist Church" interpretation of karma(The Westboro Baptist Church, for those of you out there who mayn't have heard of it, is a rabidly anti-homosexual church led by the Reverend Fred Phelps, who, along with his congregation, pickets the funerals of both dead gays and US service personnel, because it's the "Reverend's" contention that, since God hates fags, and America tolerates them, he also hates America), or, as I like to think of it, the World War Two-era Wehrmacht or Imperial Japanese Army version of that same belief, in which an entire nation, people, etc, can and should be held accountable for their government's crimes and mis-deeds.

In short, it's the idea of karma as collective punishment(So, if you can imagine the Amida Buddha, or some other incarnation of the Buddha dressed up as, and possessing the manners of, a stereotypical World War Two movie Wehrmacht general, you might hear him or her say something to the effect of, "Zo, you haff been fery nasty to mein gut friends, ze Tibetans. Vell, remember dat, for efery vun Tibetan you kill, I vill haff a hundred Chineze shot vithin vun half-hour").

Great, just what the world needs, the Gautama Buddha as played by Erich Von Stroheim or Conrad Veidt.

If that's the case, what we, the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Russians, Japanese, Germans and Israelis, among others, have coming to us will make 11th September look like a walk in the park by comparison.

That is, if you either believe in that interpretation of karmic destiny, or even believe in karma at all.

As for me, well, I know so little about the differences between dharma and karma, it isn't funny, so am not about to even attempt any sort of discourse on that topic.

What I will say is that I believe that shifting tectonic plates underneath the Earth's crust cause earthquakes, not dharma, karma, or any other sort of divine judgement or punishment.

You may choose, of course, to disagree with me on that subject, as is your right.

I'm neither God nor the Pope, and my estimation and judgment are far from infallible on so many topics, it makes my head swim just thinking about it.

But, I do believe that there are very real issues of life, death and survival at stake for both the Tibetan and Chinese peoples in this issue, and that comments like Ms. Stone's, her on-line and off-line detractors, and either pro-Tibetan, or at least anti-Chinese, knuckleheads like NewEnglandPatChic's trivialise them by bringing the discussion level down to, as one of The Young Turks' co-hosts described some of Ms. Stone's remarks, "a second-grade level."

With that, I most wholeheartedly agree, though you may not.

Either way, here endeth the rant, and, as always, be seeing you.

Now, I’ve Seen Everything(Not Bloody Likely, I Have!!)

2008-06-01T06:32:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine sent this site addy in an e-mail to me this morning.

It's http://kittywigs.com/.

That's right. Wigs for cats.

Incredible, no????

I'd say so, as well as a few other words and phrases not suitable for family publications, unless they're published by the Manson Family, that is.

I took a look at the wigs on offer on the site(there are four of them), and all I can say is that I admire the feline models that wore those wigs in the photos of them for being as patient with their Monkey-People care-givers as they possibly could.

Cats, generally speaking, don't LIKE having anything on their little noggins, and I don't blame 'em a bit for it.

So, when some chuckle-headed Monkey Person decides that putting a hat, wig or whatever else on their long-suffering feline companion is a good idea, I can only hope that either the feline will tolerate it, as they often, or give 'em a good, quick clawing to let 'em know where they stand.

Needless to say any further, I think wigs for cats is a damned poor idea.

But, who am I to piss on anyone else's parade, eh????

I can only hope that the cats in the various households that purchase these wigs will have the good sense to avoid their silly Monkey People until the latter have that silly notion out of their systems.

Be seeing you.

The Lords Of All Creation(So They Think!!!)

2008-06-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

Have a Facebook account that have started up a little over a week ago, and this entry was originally posted in my Facebook Notes just a few minutes ago.

Am including a link to a Facebook Note written by a friend of mine on another blog, and imported to here about two stories of exclusion of autistic people, the first being a present-day American story of a Port Lucie, Florida 5 year-old, Alex Barton, who was voted out of his kindergarten class by his classmates on the instigation of their teacher, Ms. Wendy Portillo, and of her own exclusions as a child.

Just appalling, really.

The link's http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=15720918169&ref=mf.

Please go to it, read it, and think about what you can do to NOT be a complete exclusionary arsehole in your own lives.
Be seeing you.

A Fistful Of Mego Star Trek Videos

2008-06-01T06:28:00.000-07:00

Just got through watching, and laughing my head at, a sextet of Mego(the company that made a line of 8 inch Star Trek action figures back in the mid-'70s)Star Trek action figure videos, made by the good folks at Hoserlu Studios, and posted up on YouTube, as well as their own site, http://hoserlu.com/.

The figure puppetry is of mixed quality, as is the voice-work. But, the writing and most of the rest of the quality of these videos are quite well-done, amateur, action figure videos that, while maybe not giving "Robot Chicken" a run for its money, should fit the bill.

One last bit before we jump into the videos here, and that's, as the folks at Hoserlu themselves warn on their YouTube postings, there is adult humour of the most juvenile kind, meaning sex jokes, profanity, etc.

With that in mind, here we go, and may God help you, because no one else can;).

The first entry's "Star Trek: The Mego Picture", which features Capt. Kirk, Dr. McCoy, Ensign Goodbody(Hey, the folks at Hoserlu named her, not I), and a couple of security officers(Guess who dies first!!!)as they find themselves at the mercy of some very brilliant, and very bored, aliens whilst on a mission on an alien planet.

Next, we have "Star Trek: The Mego Picture, Part 2 Trailer", in which one can see some exciting(well, it depends on one's definition of exciting)scenes from the sequel to "Star Trek: The Mego Picture".

The third verse, which is worse than the first, in this wretched Mego Star Trek saga, is "Star Trek: The Mego Picture-The Bloopers"(you knew that HAD to be coming!!!).

Then, we have some "leaked" footage from the sequel to "Star Trek: The Mego Picture", which gives us a "sneak" preview of what we can expect in the sequel. Or, does it????

After enough beating about the bush to scare all the game in the national park away for a month, we finally arrive at Part I of "Star Trek: The Mego Picture, Part 2", in which Captain Kirk finds himself being court-martialed for crimes against humanity, or something like that.

Finally(and not a moment too soon, you might be thinking), we have Part 2 of "Star Trek: The Mego Picture, Part 2", which concludes this saga, at least for now.

One can also see the entire film, uninterrupted, at http://hoserlu.com/, and it's in higher resolution, if that's your particular bag.

BTW, in parting, let me just say that, a la Hoserlu Studios own disclaimer at the end of their end titles, this blog entry has been made without the written permission of Hoserlu Studios, Paramount Pictures, etc, and please don't sue me, as I've nothing any of you out there working for those enterprises(pun unintentional, or is it???)would want, not even Amigo the Cat.

Anyhow, hope you enjoy this collection of Star Trek and Mego figure fan-vids, and, as always, be seeing you.

YouTube Video Clips: "Fantastic Voyage Cartoon Opening And Closing Credits(1968)

2008-06-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am going to get off of my dead arse in a day or two and post Part Two of "The Orphan" here.

But, in the meantime, here's a bit of vintage('68, to be precise)Saturday morning cartoon footage from YouTube to keep you entertained while you're waiting.

The opening and closing title clips shown below are from the 1968 Filmation animated adaptation of "Fantastic Voyage", which ran on ABC TV from '68 to '70, and which was one of the better-done Saturday morning shows of its day.

By the way, the narration in the opening titles is provided by the late Mr. Ted Knight, whom you probably know best as either Ted Baxter from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", or Mr. Rush from "Too Close For Comfort", who not only provided narration for this show, as well as the voice of the show's team commander, Jonathan Kidd, but who did voices for at least two other Saturday morning shows in the mid-'60's through early '70's.

Lastly, the closing titles, with the ominous reiterations of the show's theme, combined with the sound effects of the various machines operating with no controllers about, and the visuals, make for one of the most effectively creepy and memorable end titles for any film or television project I've ever seen.

Anyhow, enjoy and be seeing you.

Opening titles:

Closing titles:

Happy Thanksgiving, Turkeys!!!!

2007-11-21T20:13:00.001-08:00

This pair of Thanksgiving-themed YouTube videos, "Be Thankful You Are Not A Turkey" and "Turkey Attack" were originally posted, or re-posted, by my MySpace friend Cheryl in a pair of her bulletins yesterday.

Re-posted 'em as bulletins myself yesterday, and, to-night, am placing 'em here for y'all to see.

Hope you like 'em, and Happy Thanksgiving, Thanks For Givin', or Thanks Fer Nuthin', depending on what you think of the holiday.

Be seeing you.

Video: "Why Your Dog Really Goes Outside"

2007-11-19T17:58:00.000-08:00

Saw this in a MySpace bulletin post, or rather, re-post, by my friend Cheryl, and enjoyed it so much that I re-posted it as a bulletin and a blog entry in my MySpace blog, and am reproducing it here as well, for your possible delectation and amusement.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Be seeing you.
----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Cheryl
Date: Nov 19, 2007 5:17 PM

Grapes, Cocoa Mulch, And Other Items That Can Poison Your Pets

2007-11-14T11:48:00.001-08:00

Got this message fowarded to me to-day by a friend of mine, and thought, especially for those of you out there who've pets, that this would well be worth passing on this bit of info about.

Please also see the following web pages on this and similar subjects at http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/raisins.asp, http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/cocoamulch.asp,http://www.thepetcenter.com/wai/poi_PP.html,
http://www.petalia.com.au/Templates/StoryTemplate_Process.cfm?specie=Dogs&story_no=257,
and http://www.aspca.org/site/DocServer/grapes.pdf?docID=189, for further information on common foods and household items that can poison your animal companions.

Enough from me. The message's below, and be seeing you.

Subject: Fwd: Must Read for All Dog Owners!!!!

Onions, chocolate, cocoa, MACADAMIA NUTS, RAISINS........can all be fatal to dogs.PLs read story below......and remember, for those of you working at Beck Bldg Co, Kevin's dog died the same way!

If you have a dog or know someone with a dog... PLEASE read this and send it on.

Written by: Laurinda Morris, DVM
Danville Veterinary Clinic
Danville , Ohio

This week I had the first case in history of raisin toxicity ever seen at MedVet. My patient was a 56-pound, 5 yr old male neutered lab mix that ate half a canister of raisins sometime between 7:30 AM and 4:30 PM on Tuesday. He started with vomiting, diarrhea and shaking about 1AM on Wednesday but the owner didn't call my emergency service until 7AM.

I had heard somewhere about raisins AND grapes causing acute Renal failure but hadn't seen any formal paper on the subject. We had her bring the dog in immediately. In the meantime, I called the ER service at MedVet, and the doctor there was like me - had heard something about it, but.... Anyway, we contacted the ASPCA National Animal Poison Control Center and they said to give I V fluids at 1 1/2 times maintenance and watch the kidney values for the next 48-72 hours.

The dog's BUN (blood urea nitrogen level) was already at 32 (normal less than 27) and creatinine! over 5 ( 1.9 is the high end of normal). Both are monitors of kidney function in the bloodstream. We placed an IV catheter and started the fluids. Rechecked the renal values at 5 PM and the BUN was over 40 and creatinine over 7 with no urine production after a liter of fluids. At the point I felt the dog was in acute renal failure and sent him on to MedVet for a urinary catheter to monitor urine output overnight as well as overnight care.

He started vomiting again overnight at MedVet and his renal values have continued to increase daily. He produced urine when given lasix as a diuretic. He was on 3 different anti-vomiting medications and they still couldn't control his vomiting. Today his urine output decreased again, his BUN was over 120, his creatinine was at 10, his phosphorus was very elevated and his blood pressure, which had been staying around 150, skyrocketed to 220.. He continued to vomit and the owners elected to
euthanize.

This is a very sad case - great dog, great owners who had no idea raisins could be a toxin. Please alert everyone you know who has a dog of this very serious risk. Poison control said as few as 7 raisins or grapes could be toxic. Many people I know give their dogs grapes or raisins as treats including our ex-handler's. Any exposure should give rise to immediate concern.
Onions, chocolate, cocoa and macadamia nuts can be fatal, too.

Even if you don't have a dog, you might have friends who do. This is worth passing on to them.
Confirmation from Snopes about the above...http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/raisins.asp

On Killing A Bird

2007-11-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

About ten minutes ago, I killed a bird, don't know the species or sub-species thereof, not more than a few yards from where am writing this.

Why???

Because, from its motions and actions, I could tell that it had ingested some of the poison that the employees of a local Mexican supermarket just south of me had laid out for the local pigeons, and had seen some of the same actions and motions displayed by some of those same pigeons as they lay dying in parts of my condo complex.

Whatever sort of poison the poor bird ingested, it was in agony.

At the time, was walking back and forth to the dumpster to put various bits of trash in it, and saw the poor thing struggling.

Originally, was going to wait until it died, then put it in a plastic bag and put it in the dumpster.

But, with each trip I made, I saw that, however much it'd stopped moving from time to time, it was still alive and in agony.

It was after either the fourth or fifth trip, I believe, that I decided that I would have to end its misery and life, so that it wouldn't suffer any further than it already had.

So, I got a plastic bag, went over to where it lay, and tried breaking its neck, the first couple of times by grabbing its beak and twisting its little head all the way 'round counter-clockwise, then once by pulling up on its beak, bending the head in all the way towards the bird's body.

No dice. Must not have been doing it hard enough.

Was never trained for this, as I didn't grow up on a farm and learn how to twist chickens' necks, so, yeah, I did it badly and undoubtedly increased the poor creature's fear and suffering exponentially.

There were times I looked down upon the bird, it looked up at me, our eyes met, and I apologised to it for what I was doing to it.

Stupid??? Perhaps.

But, it was a living being, already in great pain, and then to have something far larger than itself come along and ineptly try to kill it, was perhaps the final injury and insult added on to the ones it had already received.

An apology is the very LEAST I could have done for it under the circumstances.

Anyhow, finally resolved to get a kitchen knife and cut off its head, rather than try and break its neck any more.

So, I went back to my place, got a kitchen knife out of the dishwasher, walked over to the bird, and, after placing the plastic bag I'd with me all this time over its head, began sawing away at its neck.

Sure enough, within 15-30 seconds of doing that, the bird was dead. Knew this because I'd stopped when it stopped moving to see.

Put the plastic bag over its corpse, not fully decapitated, by the way, and, apologising to it for the undignified death and burial it had undergone, and was about to undergo, I placed it as gently as I could in the dumpster.

Death is never easy to endure nor watch, whatever form it takes, nor is it as easy to inflict,whether on a bird, other animal or human, as some might think it is.

Perhaps, for them, it is.

Not for me.

The main regrets I have are two, the first being that I so badly botched euthanising the bird as I did. His death should have been quick and clean, but, thanks to my lack of training and inexperience in this matter, it was harder than it had to be for the bird.

The second is that the bird even got close to the poison laid out by the supermarket's employees.

This has been going on for at least two years now, and has got to stop, or be stopped.

Will have to speak to Animal Control and the Humane Society about this.

In the meantime, may the bird rest in peace. It surely deserves it after the kind of inconsiderate and ineptly handled poisoning and death it got.

Be seeing you.

YouTube Cat Videos: "When Cats Attack" and "When Cats Attack Again"

2007-11-10T00:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a pair of YouTube cat videos from "Saintjef", "When Cats Attack" and its sequel, "When Cats Attack Again", both of which feature the same feline protagonist.

Won't say anything more about her or the rest of the videos' contents. Just see and hear for yourselves.

Be seeing you.

YouTube Satirical Clip: "Pat The Postman"

2007-11-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Rock Angel
Date: Nov 8, 2007 1:40 PM
Courtesy of my MySpace friend Rock Angel comes this YouTube satire of a British children's show, "Pat The Postman", with voice track suitably altered.

Hadn't seen an episode of the show before in my life, before seeing this, and it made me laugh my arse off.

Hope it does the same for you.

Be seeing you.

From: Hil
Date: 08 Nov 2007, 21:19

From: ₪۩Ðд®яeй۩₪
Date: 08 Nov 2007, 10:57

Finnish School Shooting Article: 8 Dead, Including Shooter.

2007-11-07T15:08:00.001-08:00

For those of you out there who wonder why the Hell I make some of the loopy posts I do, like the last two before this one, it's partially to keep from going absolutely bonkers with depression and despair at news like the recent events coming out of Pakistan, Georgia(the former Soviet republic, that is), or this little gem out of Finland, specifically the small town of Tuusala, some 30 miles north of Helsinki, where an 18 year-old boy shot five boys, two girls, and the school's female principal to death, before fatally wounding himself(He died in hospital in Helsinki later on)with a head shot.

Read about this a little while after I posted the two allegedly comic posts before this, and, while had been following the story as it developed, the final news of this still came as no less depressing a denounement as the earlier news of it was.

What a God-Damned waste and pity.

May the victims rest in peace, and may their families, as well as the gun-man's, try to find some peace of their own, if they can.

As for the gun-man, what more can be said, really??? He's dead, and beyond the reach of human justice.

As for cosmic or divine justice, am gonna leave that to y'all to figure out for yourselves.

If you want to read the AP via Yahoo News article in full, here it is at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071107/ap_on_re_eu/finland_school_shooting.

Just awful, and what more can I say????

Be seeing you.

The All Walking, Talking, Dancing And Singing Abortion!!!

2007-11-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

Someone once asked me if my folks had any children that lived.

I replied in the affirmative.

He then went on to state that they must have been sorry I had.

I asked him, in response, whatever on Earth made him think that I meant myself.

To this, the questioner had no response, save to start biting out his small intestines in a furiously impotent rage.

I then walked away from the poor, mad fool before he soiled my shoes with his entrails.

Now, that you've read all this, please remember that I made this up, using a line said by Lee Ermey's Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann to Vincent D'Onofrio's Private "Gomer Pyle"(nee Leonard Lawrence)in one of the first scenes in "Full Metal Jacket", then embroided upon it a little.

Speaking of entrails, not too bad for something I pulled outta my arse, eh????

Well, maybe not.

Have a case of people crazies to-day, and am working it out of my system.

Either that, or am finally having that Nineteenth Nervous Break-Down of which I've been dreaming for so long.

You decide.

Be seeing you.

Of Secret Crushes(What!!! No Orange Crush??!!) And All That

2007-11-07T15:04:00.000-08:00

Those of you who are MySpace regulars have undoubtedly seen by now, at least half a hundred ads urging one to click on them and "find out the name of your secret crush!!!"

Well, I never do, because I already know the name of my secret crush; it's Mrs. Grizelda McGillicuddy-Stepanovich of 48 Upchuck Terrace, Neasden, London, SW, and she's been madly infatuated with me since the end of the Nigerian Civil War in 1970, or maybe it just SEEMS like she has. I don't know.

Actually, I don't know the name of anyone who has a secret, or open, crush on me at this time.

Plus, I don't think clicking on any link promising me that I will know the name of my secret crush will actually deliver on that.

Not one eensy-weensy bit.

Instead, what I will probably get is quite a lot of spam and such, and I am not from Hawai'i nor Korea, so I don't care for Spam that much, though I will eat it sometimes.

The real article, that is, not the cyber-kind. Upsets my stomach too much.

So, so much for knowing the name of my secret crush, eh???

Be seeing you.

Some YouTube Video Takes On "Moeritaet" aka "Mack The Knife" From The Threepenny Opera

2007-11-07T07:44:00.000-08:00

Am inspired to do this by a blog post made by my friend Pie, who posted a YouTube video of Bobby Darin singing his 1959 version of the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill song, "Mack The Knife", or "Mackie Messer" in the original German, from the 1928 opera, "The Threepenny Opera".

That piece was, in turn, inspired by another opera, John Gay's 1767 opus, "The Beggar's Opera", which Brecht roughly adapted and up-dated, to Victorian-era, rather than Georgian-era London, as was the original's setting.

So, in that time-, continent-, and culture-spanning spirit, I present to you for your consideration, the following variations of songs from "Die Dreigroschenoper", or "Threepenny Opera", or whatever other variant name you know it by.

The first's from the 1931 G.W. Pabst German film adaptation, and features Ernst Busch, the great interpreter of much of the work of Brecht and his other, more frequent, musical collaborator, Hans Eisler, and who became of the leading entertainment figures in the German Democratic Republic(GDR, or just plain old East Germany)after World War Two, until his death in 1980, as the Streetsinger in his version of "Moeritaet", aka "Mack The Knife".

Next, from the 1962 West German film version of the "The Threepenny Opera", and specifically, the English-language version of the film, is Sammy Davis Junior doing his take on "Mack The Knife", which musically, as well lyrically, seems to combine elements of both the original "Moeritaet" with the Bobby Darin swing-oriented version of the tune.

Then, also from 1962, we have a television appearance by Mr. Louis Armstrong, who, according to some information I got on a site devoted to the Threepenny Opera(http://www.threepennyopera.org/), was the first American artist to record the swing version of "Mack The Knife", and who was also the first to mention Lotte Lenya, who played Jenny The Pirate in the original Berlin production 30 years earlier in the song, and who was in the recording studio the very day that Armstrong recorded his version of the piece.

From 1965, Miss Ella Fitzgerald does her take on the tune in a London tv appearance, and, as you can hear in the performance, forgets a number of the lyrics while doing it!!!!

Finally, because you and I both have only so much time to devote to this, here's a recent Brazilian version of the tune, in the original German, done by a pair of Brazilian artists, Servio Tulio(vocalist)and Glauco Baptista(piano) at the ARMAZÉM DIGITAL recital hall in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, probably last year.

Ah, wait just one second or two before I let you go, because you should see and hear this little number, "Pirat Jenny" or "Jenny The Pirate" as sung by Miss Lotte Lenya, who was, off-stage, Mrs. Kurt Weill, and the creator of the part in the original 1928 Berlin run of the "Threepenny Opera".

The tune???? Not what you might be expecting, which would be another variant of "Moeritaet" or "Mack The Knife", but a song which made her, and her part, justly famous, "Seerabuenjenny"("Sailor Jenny in English, as least as presented by the person who posted it to YouTube. I don't know for sure).

Listen very carefully to how Lenya uses her voice, especially when she hits the high notes on the refrain about "a ship with eight sails and fifty cannons", and, in the final shot of the clip, when she looks at MacHeath, the camera, and us.

If that doesn't even faze you a little, I'd say ice-water rather than blood flows in your veins.

Be seeing you.

Opening Cans Of Worms

2007-11-07T00:13:00.001-08:00

From comedy, we now go to the deadly serious, with this essay taken from something that I both did and happened to me this evening.

Got an e-mail from a friend of mine about immigration that I didn't care for, and it'd been one of several that I'd received over the weeks and months past from this friend and two others, that had either anti-illegal immigrant or anti-Muslim postings in them.

Well, to-night, rather than just deleting the message and not responding to it at all, as has been my usual practise these many years past, I responded, politely, or at least so I thought at the time, asking them not to send me any more messages of that sort, as I don't care for them, and giving a very small idea of why I don't care for such messages.

Also sent a copy of my response to my therapist, for her to peruse and see what I may have done right and wrong in addressing my friends.

All that said, received a phone call from one of the friends I sent my response to this evening, and it was not an easy phone conversation to have.

However, as much as I disagree with my friend on the immigration issue, I have to say that, however inelegantly he put some of his points at times, he had some good ones to make, particularly about economic competition with illegal immigrants and being essentially priced down, if not completely out of the labour market he's in(construction), and the effects that immigration has had on school districts, health care facilities and the like, and, as much as I'd perhaps like to pooh-pooh some of them, the observations I can't disagree with, even if I do strongly disagree with some of his premises and conclusions on the causes.

By the way, don't let the manner in which am putting this deceive you. There were often times that we talked over, quite literally, and across each other. This wasn't some sort of Oxford-Cambridge-Harvard-Yale-style debate, done over glasses of sherry and with cigars, while seated in easy chairs.

It also wasn't, Thank God, a complete telephonic knock-down, drag-out brawl, either.

If so, there would undoubtedly be, if I even felt like writing this, a much angrier, darker tone to this essay than there is.

It's not that everything worked out to be hunky-dory. The conversation ended when my friend's wife, who is an even older and dearer friend of mine than the fellow mentioned here, said that she would call me to-morrow morning, because my friend was rather too upset to continue it, and I agreed.

I don't know when and if that call will come, and what will come of the whole matter within the next few days, weeks, months or years.

Only time will tell. Am hoping it will work out well for all of us, but can't and won't say that for now.

Have yet to hear from the other two friends, as well as my therapist, and their reactions to the whole matter.

Mind you, I don't like making trouble, as a general rule, and risking losing friends over issues that, in the long run, may turn out to be just so much small beer.

But, I also don't like seeing, reading or hearing something and not at least making some small, polite murmurs of dissent, either.

Have opened up a can of worms here, Folks, and yes, I just hadda open my big mouth, now, didn't I???

Well, maybe not.

But, I can't always keep it shut either, not and feel like, on some nano-level someplace, am betraying the values for which I say I stand.

However this works out, there is one lesson that am least aware of enough to take away from this, and this goes with a notion that have been formulating for the past several days now, which is that much of the American Left, as it currently stands, is very painfully divorced from the realities that many working-class and poor Americans live, each and every day, on a wide variety of issues.

Illegal immigration is one of those issues, I think.

Yeah, racism, fear of change, whether cultural, social, economic or biological, and the whole sorry history of US-Latin American, especially with our closest Latin American neighbours, are at the back of a lot of this nastiness, as well as a certain feeling of entitlement on the parts of many Americans, especially European-Americans.

"Thank God, We're White" has long been a sentiment and saying among many working-class and poor European-Americans, who otherwise are struggling just as hard as their African-American, Latino, Asian-American, Pacific Islander and Native American neighbours, and has been used as a kind of crutch to deal with very real fears about their own economic, social and political presents and futures.

My friend has, I think, some pretty legitimate fears about his and his family's health care, educational and other needs, especially his son's, and those can't simply be dismissed as know-nothing concerns.

Those are as real as anyone else's concerns, regardless of race, class or other origins, for themselves and their families, whether citizens, legal immigrants or illegal immigrants, and can't just be dismissed out of hand the way that some on the Left, including Yours Truly in the past, have done so.

This is where the Left has really fallen down on the job, I think, because, ultimately, immigration, like a ton of other issues I could name, but won't, because it'd take me too damned long to it, is connected to race, class, other historical issues, and, the most important one of all, who gets and who don't in this country, and the world.

There are a lot of people out there, like my friend, as well as various family members and other friends of mine, who've expressed similar ideas and sentiments to me in the past, and with whom I've fought about this, because I thought they were expressing a particular form of bigotry.

Well, turns out that was only half-right.

There was bigotry, but also, however unscientifically-done and emotionally-based(as are the vast majority of observations), there were some real observations from a worm's-eye view of some of the social conditions currently present in the US.

Does this mean I'm gonna go support Lou Dobbs, the Millionaire Populist, who's got rich off of yammering on about illegal immigration and advocating a nasty form of middle-class populism that daemonises both the rich and the poor alike???

Hell, no, for the reasons I've about him I've given above, and will say no more about that clown.

Does this mean am gonna go join the Minutemen????

Hah!!!!

I'd sooner join the fuckin' Klan as join them, and that ain't gonna happen anytime soon, baby.

What it means, to me at least, is that so-called ordinary folks from the various sides of the immigration debate seriously need to get away from our so-called leaders and opinion-makers, and talk, debate, argue and work our respective ways through all the propaganda and out-right lies that we've been fed, and, in turn, have fed to other folks along the way, about this and a whole bunch of other issues.

This doesn't mean that we're all gonna end up holding hands, singing whatever hymns of unity, peace and brotherhood, as we march together, hand in hand, into the Promised Land(With all due apologies to the late Rev. King on this score).

There is a lot of history, and all the bad, and other kinds of, blood that goes along with it, lotsa differing premises, ideas and conclusions from as many folks as there are sides to this issue, and some of them aren't ever gonna be reconcilable, no matter how hard one tries to make them so.

These facts, I think, should be noted and taken as givens before such a dialogue even starts up.

That said, I think there's also quite a bit of room here for both agreement and disagreement on at least a few of the various issues dealing with immigration on which most folks, even if in just the smallest ways, could agree enough with each other to take effective action on.

One of them is that, for whatever reasons, the current immigration system in the US is busted, plain and simple.

Two is that, for far too God-Damned long, many shit-bird employers have been able to skirt 'round labour and other laws designed to protect workers from various forms of employer-inflicted abuse, and justify their actions by saying that they can't afford to get the job done any other way, unless they hire illegal immigrant labour.

Number Three would be that, whether due to illegal immigrant labour use by American employers, or the various forms of out-sourcing by American businesses to overseas markets, where labour's far cheaper than here, the positions of many middle-class, working-class and poor Americans have been badly under-cut by the American business classes and their policies, especially within the past twenty-ix years or so, or there are no signs of the situation improving anytime soon, no matter which of the two parties, or even some of the third parties, win the 2008 general elections.

The fourth, final, and most controversial point of all is that there needs to be a fundamental change in the way in which wealth is produced and distributed, not only in this country, but world-wide, so folks don't have to leave home to find satisfying work, or just plain old unsatisfying work, period, to themselves and their loved ones from starving to death.

This, to my mind, means some form of socialism, in whatever manner or form you want to call it or apply it.

Capitalism's great at generating wealth, don't get me wrong.

But, it's dead shitty on distributing it evenly throughout a society, period.

For those who are fortunate enough to benefit from capitalism as an economic and social system, it works great.

Then, there are the rest of us folks, for whom it works only intermittently well, marginally well, or not at fuckin' all, take your pick, your name here, thank you very much.

It's the nine-tenths of folks, to whom I belong, with whom I'm concerned.

The rich have always taken care of themselves, and always will take care of themselves, come what may.

Gotta hand it to 'em in that regard. They've generally done just fine at doing that over millennia, centuries, decades and years, and I see no sign of them, again, generally speaking, losing their touch in that area.

That's why I ain't concerned with what the rich think or how they will fare.

But, I would have to also say that, whatever form of socialism, or at least substantial economic, political and social reforms that come about in the US, or in other parts of the world, that aren't socialist, but are at least steps in the direction of greater equality and prosperity(That's right, PROSPERITY. No sense in being equal if the only equality there is is of starving to death)for the bulk of humanity, is gonna have to be suited to the individual region's history, geography, resources, resource use and culture.

No more assuming that just because something works well in, say, Sweden, that it will work equally well in the US, France, Mexico, Singapore, Poland, or Uganda.

One size fits all may work great in the garment industry, but it sure as shittin' don't work worth a tinker's damn in politics, economics, or in making a society that works for the benefit of all of its people.

Well, here I've gone and done it again. Opened up another can of worms, haven't I???

You bet I have.

This time, am not sorry I have, as there really needs to be some kind of active debate going on in this country that isn't just driven by politicos, pundits, think-tank intellectuals, academics and the like.

They have their places, don't get me wrong, but they don't generally have to feel the impacts of their policy debates, policies and policy implementations on the ground level.

You, I, and a lotta other people whom neither of us will ever even meet, much less get to know, will and do, every single day.

Be seeing you.

A Trio Of YouTube Frantics Boots To The Head For You

2007-11-05T23:17:00.000-08:00

Found these three videos featuring two routines by the '80's Canadian comedy group The Frantics, who had both a radio and a television show in Canada back in the mid-'80's, containing two of their most famous sketches, "Last Will And Temperament" and "Tae Kwon Leep(with the accompanying song, "Boot To The Head" after the sketch's finish), both of which feature suckers getting well-deserved boots to their heads.

The first video is footage of the original sketch from The Frantics' tv show, while the second's the audio track of a live performance of the same sketch, with a new character and a couple of new bits added onto it(It was this version that I heard on the Dr. Demento show many moons ago, and which is my favourite), with a flash animation parody of an anime show, "Phoenix Wright"(of which I've not heard), by its YouTube poster, CMSPyroWolf providing the visuals.

The last video features the soundtrack from "Tae Kwon Leep/Boot To The Head", with the only visual provided being the cover to the comedy album, "Boot To The Head", from which this sketch is taken.

Well, depending on what sort of day you've had, you may find these gut-bustingly funny, or only mildly amusing.

But, either way, enjoy and be seeing you.

Oh, one last item, and that's the volume on the first video's rather on the low side, so you may want to turn up your system volume a little. Just make sure to please reduce said volume when it's done.

Wouldn't want to blow out your ear-drums now.

Be seeing you.

YouTube Music Video: "It's A Mistake" by Men At Work(1982)

2007-11-04T03:27:00.000-08:00

From the Australian pop-rock group Men At Work's 1982 album "Cargo", courtesy of Jovar89 who posted it to YouTube, comes this video of one of the tunes from that album, "It's A Mistake".

Both the song's and video's central theme is about a nuclear war accidentally starting, with the expected results.

For those Americans and Russians who see this, and wonder "Why the Hell would the Australians be concerned about nuclear war???", I'd like to point out that Australia was, at various points throughout the Cold War, a member of the old SEATO(South-East Asia Treaty Organization)organisation until it dissolved in the mid-1970's, and was also a member of the ANZUS(Australia-New Zealand-US)alliance, which is still, I believe, in effect to-day, although in a moribund state, at least on New Zealand's part.

Australia also contributed troops to the UN forces in Korea during the Korean Conflict, and to the various Allied contingents fighting alongside US and South Vietnamese forces during the Viet-Nam War, and was, and still is, home to a small number of US military communications and surveillance facilities.

So, that country was, at the time this video was released, and still is, as the presence of Australian forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to-day proves, a part of the Western alliance, and, even though a lesser one when compared with the US, Great Britain or France, would have been a target for Soviet nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO and its allies world-wide.

Going from the bits of info presented above, I'd say that there were was good reason for Australians to be concerned about the possibility of nuclear war breaking out, for whatever reasons, as anyone else on the planet during the Cold War had at the time.

By the way, although Men At Work broke up in either 1984, or perhaps as late as '86, I don't know, it reformed in 1997, with two of the original band's members, Colin Hay, the vocalist and writer of most of MAW's songs, and Greg Ham, its drummer and keyboardist, and occasional songwriter for the group, with a new bassist and co-lead guitar, and have been together, as far as I know, ever since.

They've toured throughout a fair portion of the world, especially in Brazil, where they are staggeringly popular(The one album made by MAW's new incarnation, "Brazil", which came out in '98, and a copy of which I've at home, was a live concert album mainly recorded at various concerts they did while touring that country, with one new in-studio recorded song, "The Longest Night", at the album's end), and, as far as I know, remain together to this day. Will have to check on that in future, however.

They've even played Las Vegas a few times in the past several years, and I once saw part of a concert they did at the Fremont Street Experience in down-town Vegas back in either 2001 or 2002(am thinking it was the latter year).

It was the first time I'd ever seen Men At Work live, and I think they acquitted themselves pretty well, even if Colin Hay's voice sounded a little ragged on some of the higher notes in the various songs presented.

But, considering it had been some twenty years since he first recorded and performed those tunes, plus the effects of aging and "Vegas Throat"(a condition in which the dry climate here essentially constricts the vocal chords to one degree or another, especially for singers coming into Las Vegas from moister climes, and a common complaint among singers performing here), and the fact that it's pretty unfair of me to compare Mr. Hay's voice that night to a twenty-year old recording, I'd say that any raggedness in Mr. Hay's voice was a pretty minor complaint compared to what the group delivered, which was a pretty good show.

Be seeing you.

Book Review: "Watch Out" By Dr. Joseph Suglia

2007-11-02T04:47:00.000-07:00

This is a quick, but not too dirty, review of Dr. Joseph Suglia's novel, "Watch Out".

Now, before we go any further, lemme just say that, in the interests of full disclosure, I was a MySpace friend of Dr. Suglia's, and he kindly sent me a copy of the novel in the hopes that I would review it on Amazon.com.

Well, while I've an Amazon.com account set up, haven't bought anything from the suckers yet, so I can't post a review there for now. Will do so in the very near future.

In the meantime, for what it's worth, here's a preview review(Unintentional rhymes, especially when created by myself, bite the Big One and suck Dead Donkey Dicks), which am posting here, and on my MySpace blog

'Nuff bladerdash. Let's do it to it, as my dad would say.

"Watch Out" 's protagonist, Professor Jonathan Barrows, is a man apart, and deliberately so, as he believes himself to be the only human being alive worth a tinker's damn and then some.

He's a classic solipsist and narcissist all rolled into one extremely vain package, and is one to the extent that he can only engage in sex with a custom-made blow-up doll of himself, or become aroused by listening to a tape recording of himself reading excerpts from Max Stirner's " The Unique Individual and Its Property".

He loathes both men and women, considering them to be equally ugly and worthless, as he does all humanity in general, except, of course, for himself.

In this, at least, Barrows is quite consistent.

The novel follows Barrows from the end of his train ride to Benton Harbor, Michigan, where he has an interview for the position of "Assistant Professor of Intelligent Thinking" with a Dr. Mendoza, who teaches in the School of Learning at Benton Harbor Community College.

But, the School's receptionist, Miss Grimmlager, has no recollection of either receiving Barrows' e-mails that he sent prior to arriving at the institution, nor of any scheduled interview with Dr. Mendoza, which causes Barrows to wait, wait, and wait still more until he can see him. When he finally does, it's not in the context that either Professor Barrows nor Dr. Mendoza would have perhaps found to be the ideal.

All that said, what is "Watch Out' about???

Well, I think that it can be taken as either a grotesquely comic portrait of both a grotesquely vain man, and the equally grotesque culture(There's a diner in the novel that features, among other dubious culinary delights, "Chicken-Powdered Fries"), populated by monumental idiots and sub-morons, which is, of course, how Barrows sees them, and the rest of humanity.

In this regard, it reminds me quite a lot of the late John Kennedy O'Toole's "A Confederacy Of Dunces", in which its protagonist, who, like Barrows, is fond of using high-falutin' language(His standard insult for anyone he dis-likes is "abortions", a term which Barrows also uses once or twice in "Watch Out" to describe some of the unfortunates he encounters), and who regards the folks around him as complete twats who fail to acknowledge his superiority.

In its intensely first-person narrative, "Watch Out" also reminds me of what little I've read about, and even fewer excerpts from, the early 20th Century Japanese literary genre of the "I-Novel", with its emphasis on the protagonist's viewpoint and intensity of feeling, which Barrows has, even if clouded by a defensive wall of self-regard and loathing of others.

But, at its heart, "Watch Out" is, in my opinion, a novel of the comic grotesque that not only takes aim at the kind of highly educated, very Europeanised, sort of person that Jonathan Barrows is(He probably would have fit very well, with his preferences, affectations, and horror of dirt of any kind, into any early or mid-20th Century German or Austrian middle-class environment), but also at a culture that, as he describes a prominent pop star whom he's about to murder towards the book's close, elevates someone who, by virtue of her very ordinariness, has become a star.

There's a lot of graphic depictions of various sorts of sex, vomiting and defecation in "Watch Out", and the author, in his foreword to the novel, even says so, rating the novel "X", even though that particular designation is no longer used for rating films by the MPAA.

This means that "Watch Out" is definitely NOT for those who prefer their description of such activities to be either sanitised, or depicted not at all, and definitely not for the kiddie set(However, even if a copy of "Watch Out" were to somehow fall into a kid's hands, I suspect that he or she would probably laugh mainly at the defecation gags therein).

But, for those of you out there who've cut your teeth on any of Kurt Vonnegut's works(and Suglia's use of axioms by the good Professor Barrows, plus the sort of jump-cut style of going back and forth between various incidents in the novel, is reminiscent of Vonnegut's style in these areas), or on Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow", with its graphic depictions of excrement-eating and other forms of corophagal sexual activities, sado-masochism, and paedophilia in that novel, as well as its own non-linear story telling approach, this will be right in your line of country, I think.

Are some of the depictions of the kinds of sexual and other behaviours depicted by Suglia in "Watch Out" excessive???

Sure, but, I would say that , generally speaking, they fit Jonathan Barrows' character and the situations in which he's in, to a T.

This also shouldn't come as a surprise, since Dr. Suglia himself, describes himself in his own publicity as the "Master of Excessive Fiction', and has proclaimed himself to be "The Greatest Author In The World" in that same publicity.

Whether or not those particular self-descriptions are wholly meant or ironically so, on Dr. Suglia's part, I'll leave up to you to find out.

At the very least, "Watch Out" is well worth reading, even if you don't like Professor Barrows, and there's no indication in "Watch Out" that Barrows is at all like-able in any sense, conventional or not, of the term.

As for what will eventually become of Dr. Suglia, Barrows' creator, as the back-cover author's photo blurb states is anyone's guess, here's hoping that he will be heard from again in future.

Here Endeth The Lesson.

Be seeing you.

American Respect Newsletter And My Response

2007-11-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

Wrote this in response to an e-mail newsletter I got from American Respect, a Democratic Party-allied group to whose newsletters am subscribed, on 25th October, 2007.

This newsletter, reproduced below, talks about a plan, advocated by US Senators Joseph Biden and Leslie Gelb to solve the current inter-ethnic political crisis and fighting in Iraq by dividing the country into three states that would be, under the plan’s provisions, united, more or less, under a kind of loose federal political system.

I have real problems with that, as you’ll see in the response I sent them a day later, and reproduced below the newsletter.

As of to-day, I’ve yet to receive a reply from American Respect, and don’t expect to.

They’re under no obligation to reply to my message, just as I’ve no obligation to support Biden’s and Gelb’s plan.

Anyhow, hope this proves to be of some minor interest and food for thought.

American Respect Banner

Dear Friends:

Yet again, an op-ed is printed by a famous scholar on the merits of partition in Iraq. The plan, initially proposed by Senator Biden and President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations Leslie Gelb, seems to be the only feasible option after 5 years of misguided policies.

In general, the proposal is rooted in history and reflects recent experience in Bosnia, as well as other historical examples such as Vietnam (initially), Korea, and Germany. When marriage doesn't work, divorce or separation is a good option. Partitioning the country before a civil war achieves the same thing and would at least avoid the tragic death and destruction that took place on a massive scale.

The Biden-Gelb plan would:

1. Keep Iraq together by giving its major groups breathing room in their own regions and control over their daily lives. A central government would be left in charge of common interests like defending the borders and distributing oil revenues.
2. Secure the support of the Sunnis -- who have no oil -- by guaranteeing them a proportionate share of oil revenue and reintegrating those with no blood on their hands.
3. Increase, not end, reconstruction assistance but insist that the oil-rich Arab Gulf states fund it and tie it to the creation of a massive jobs program and to the protection of minority rights.
4. Initiate a major diplomatic offensive to enlist the support of the major powers and Iraq's neighbors for a political settlement in Iraq and create an Oversight Contact Group to enforce regional commitments.
5. Begin the phased redeployment of U.S. forces this year and withdraw most of them by the summer of 2008, with a small follow-on force to keep the neighbors honest and to strike any concentration of terrorists.

One thing to keep in mind is that the ethnic and sectarian realities of Iraq today are far different than they were in 2003 or 2004. To some extent, ethnic and/or sectarian partition is a much more realistic proposal today because of the extensive resettlement and killing which has taken place as a result of the continued civil war. The battle for Baghdad has been won by Shiites. A federalist system, much like the one in the US, would ensure regional autonomy while maintaining the republic our forces have fought so hard to keep.

American Respect urges all of its members to contact their elected representatives and inform them about this article and the Biden-Gelb plan for Iraq.
American Respect is a not-for-profit organization that believes invading Iraq has increased global terrorism, is costing thousands of lives, (and literally trillions of tax dollars) and is increasing energy costs.

We believe the US should take a very different approach to addressing this problem. Our principles for reducing terrorism are:

* Pursue true terrorists such as al Qaeda by eliminating training camps, preventing arms smuggling, freezing financial assets and apprehending terrorist leaders.
* Find balanced solutions in sensitive areas which foment terrorism by rebuilding international coalitions. Violence in regions like Chechnya, Kashmir and especially Palestine directly and adversely affects the entire Muslim world.
* Decrease our profile in Iraq and use international coalitions to lead a march toward guaranteed rights, limited government and democratic representation. Further recognize that Iraq was arbitrarily assembled in 1919 from three ethnically and religiously different Ottoman provinces, and that a peaceful solution may require a return, either partly or fully, to this pre-1919 arrangement.
* Build up the economies of Muslim countries with the goal of creating a larger middle class in each. If abject poverty is a breeding ground for terrorism, then creating broad prosperity is a key part of the solution--especially in the areas of trade and land reform. And success in the economies of any Muslim country--from Morocco to Indonesia--is positive for stability and peace throughout the region.
* Establish a tone of goodwill in policies and actions toward these nations and their growing and increasingly global populations.

To send your comments to AmericanRespect click here

If you no longer wish to receive email from americanrespect.com please click here to unsubscribe.
So we can continue the conversation, visit our site at americanrespect.com. We print selected messages in a special 'Letters to the Editor' section. All viewpoints are welcome.

email: newsletter@americanrespect.com
web: http://www.americanrespect.com

Received your newsletter of 24th October, with its advocacy of the Biden-Gelb Plan for Iraq and its peoples, and am writing you to say that there are a few items in it with which I strongly disagree.

The first is, to be blunt, the unmitigated cheek on the parts of Sens. Biden and Gelb to even presume that they, and the American government in general, have the right and the authority to say how the Iraqi people, of whatever origins its component peoples are, should organise their society.

That really isn't much different than the kind of arrogance displayed by the current Administration, its allies and supporters in its premises for invading and occupying Iraq, and in setting up one government after another under occupation auspices for that country, all in the now-dashed hopes for somehow using Iraq as a base for expanding US power and influence throughout the Middle East.

The reasoning behind this plan is similar in that its authors presume that they "know" better than the Iraqis how to best organise and run Iraq, and, due to the waves of inter-ethnic conflict and murder that have raged throughout much of Iraq in the past few years, it's time to split the country into what would be essentially three ethnic cantons, albeit "united" under a loose sort of federal structure that would quite probably fall apart once the American and coalition occupation forces had well and truly left Iraq.

That is, to repeat myself yet again, not our call, as Iraq was never, and never will be, our country.

Our invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, along with our policies toward that nation since the summer of 1990, helped create the current farrago there, and, in my opinion, it will only be once our forces, whether they belong to the US Armed Forces proper, or to the various private contractors operating there, have fully left it.

I am of the opinion that we never had any business being in Iraq, and that's why I think that only an immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of American, British and other coalition forces, with provisions made for resettling those Iraqis of various origins who threw in their lots with our efforts there in whatever countries they wish to live, is the only viable and truly moral option to advocate.

As for the idea of the reconstruction fund being financed by the Gulf Arab states, I want to say that, while I favour any reconstruction efforts to help rebuild Iraq, it shouldn't be solely, nor even primarily, financed by the Gulf Arab states, but by the US, UK, and other coalition partners that took part in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Why???

Well, for the reasons I've outlined above, that's why.

While I hate using any quote from any member, past or present, of the current Administration, I agree with Colin Powell's statement that, "We broke it, we bought it", which, like it or not, we did.

That's why I agree with a proposal made by Naomi Klein in either 2004 or 2005(Sorry if I've forgotten precisely when she made it)that the US pay reparations to whatever Iraqi government its people see fit to choose for themselves for the incredible amounts of damage, destruction and deaths inflicted on Iraq's people and infrastructure by us and our allies.

It is a solution that I believe is the only one that would entirely consistent with the values that we so love to trumpet so loudly to ourselves and the world that we believe in and stand for.

It's about time that we either put up or shut up about our love for freedom, peace, democracy and all the other values and ideals we say we admire and defend, and, like it or not, our actions, past, present and future really do speak much louder than all the fine words we throw out to the world for our and its consumption.

It's not that the Gulf Arab states, Iran, Syria, and Turkey don't have interests and responsibilities in Iraq. They do, and should fully be part of whatever solutions that are eventually planned and implemented in that country and in the Persian Gulf region.

But, they aren't the ones who battered practically every sector of Iraqi society to a gasping pulp in the 1990's, then, with the exception of Turkey in 1997, invaded that unhappy land and occupied it.

We, to a lesser extent, the British, and the other coalition partners did, and thus bear the primary responsibility in aiding the Iraqis in their reconstruction efforts.

Have no problem with other aspects of what was being advocated in this newsletter, especially with the emphasis on diplomatic engagement with the various countries in the Muslim world, and with assisting them in building up their economies. On the other hand, I think we'd be well advised to remember that it's not just a lack of economic opportunities for many folks in the various Muslim lands, but a severe lack of political and other freedoms of dissent and expression in many of those societies as well.

Here, we can, through a policy of critical engagement with those countries' elites and so-called ordinary peoples, help them to find a freer, fairer social, economic and political order for their societies.

But, in the end, to paraphrase T.E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia, and one of the Britons most heavily involved in the creation of Iraq, it's their countries, their ways, and it's better for those peoples to do things their ways, however badly, than for us, or any other outsiders, to do them, however well, because in the end, it's their countries and our time there is short.

By the way, in closing, noted a piece of potential linguistic-historical error in the portion of the plan advocating the setting up of a new Iraqi political order in the statement that, if need be, the three major components of Iraq should return to the pre-1919 order, or to something like it.

Now, I rather doubt that the people who drafted this statement meant this when they crafted it, but, considering that all three parts of present-day Iraq were, and it's mentioned in the opening part of the newsletter, provinces in the Ottoman Empire.

I don't know about you, but I don't believe that all but maybe a tiny minority of Iraqis would want a return to Turkish rule over any part of Iraq, and most especially not the Kurds, even if Turkey evidenced any sort of interest in taking back the Ottomans' role in that country.

As for the Turks, well, even with their current actions against PKK rebels in northwestern Iraq in recent days and their warnings to the Iraqi Kurds that any move on their part toward creating an independent Kurdish state in their part of Iraq wouldn't be tolerated by the Turkish government at all, I don't think that any but perhaps the most vociferously anti-Kurdish Turkish nationalists would really want control of Iraqi Kurdistan and all the headaches that would go with it.

So, I think that Sens. Biden, Gelb, their aides, and other assistants might want to take a closer and more exacting look at the wording of that part of Biden-Gelb Plan, and revise it accordingly.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Respectfully, Donald Rilea.

Joke: At A Biker Bar(Thanks Cheryl)

2007-10-29T10:46:00.001-07:00

Just saw this joke in a bulletin re-posted by my MySpace friend Cheryl, whom I thank for doing so.

Nothing like a little rude, crude humour to get the day started.

Enjoy and be seeing you.

Three guys were sitting in a biker bar.

A man came in, he was already drunk, sat down at the bar and ordered a drink.

The man looked around and saw the 3 big men sitting at a corner table. He got up, staggered to the table, leaned over, looked the biggest one in the face and said, "I went by your grandma's house and I saw her in the hallway, buck naked. Man, she is fine!"

The biker looked at him, but didn't say a word.

His buddies were confused, because he was a bad ass, and would fight at he drop of a hat.

The drunk leaned on the table again and said, "I got it on with your grandma and she is good, the best I ever had!"

The biker still said nothing. His buddies were starting to get mad now.

The drunk leaned on the table again and said, "I'll tell you something else boy, your grandma liked it!"

The biker stood up, took the drunk by the shoulder and said, "Damn it, grandpa, you're drunk. Go home!"

YouTube Animated Video: "Fantastic Voyage"(1968) Intro

2007-10-28T20:23:00.001-07:00

After the heavy-duty, and lengthy, posts I've made here over the past few days, I figure that something of a bit lighter order's needed.

So, thanks to ClassicTelevisionFan over at YouTube, comes this video clip, which is the opening titles to the 1968 ABC Saturday morning cartoon series adaptation of the 1967 science-fiction film, "Fantastic Voyage", produced by Filmation Associates, and which ran from September of 1968 until September of 1969.

Vaguely recall seeing this as a little kid in Reno, then recall considerably better viewing episodes of it in syndicated re-runs while visiting in New Jersey in 1978 and 1979.

Discovered this video clip about a week or so ago, while noodling around on YouTube, and so, I present it here, to share with you.

For those of you old enough to remember the "Mary Tyler Moore Show", and specifically the pompous news-caster character from the series, Ted Baxter, yep, the narrator's voice in this clip belongs to Ted Knight, whom some of you out there may also remember as the thoroughly obnoxious Judge Smails from the first "Caddyshack" film back in 1980.

Knight provided the voice of the series' narrator, as well as the Combined Miniature Defense Force's team commander, Jonathan Kidd, in the series.

From my admittedly scanty recollections of the show and its episodes, it was, I thought, one of the better-written Saturday morning cartoons of the period, and there still is, at least for me, a certain excitement I get whenever I watch this clip.

Hope you enjoy it as well, and be seeing you.