Stonefruit

Love's Debris

2012-01-24T14:16:00.000-08:00

For Etta James and Johnny Otis upon their passing

When I was nothing more than love’s debris
Then I never wanted to be set free
There were many rivers to cross
Daunting mountains of silver and dross
Before pale return
To mournful reality tossed
Aside the educated guesses of
My horrified refinement
Trained nothing more than
My atavistic confinement
Skipping like stones over
The oceans of boil
The gleam of which
Twitched, ripped, and roiled
The figures of illusion out
Without a doubt
Given the proper preparation
Even raging infernos
Can make ashen landscapes
Feel like a home and a haven
Within my dome I’m slaving
To
The dark elements
Can purge the last recital
And the last recital
Can shatter the star
And open the portal
But I don’t have the time
And yet I have the infinity of time
I’m working on the roots, shoots, and tendrils
Of something far beyond sublime
You’ve heard it yourself
In quiet scared little peeps
The 3:00 a.m. knocking of elite little treats
Wrecked, rocked, struck, and struck again
Like distant misted quivering
Grey horizon diaphragms
Quickness is a virtue
Slowness is a vice
And the quickness of water
Is solidified as ice
Ice expanding destroys all cells
Blood expanding rocks the bells
The body ripped asunder
Shoots over, beyond, and under
To shoot the moon
Beat the boom
And catch up with leonine room
Of the universe at external gates
Infinite yet expanding
At extraordinary rates
With practice you can catch up
To that liminal realm
And pass through it like child’s play
Light years ago
Yesterday, tomorrow, and today
Swirled, squirreled, and served up
On a tray
Like a mid-morning snack
For the gods at play

Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham

2011-08-09T21:04:00.000-07:00

"Panic" by the Smiths

Boy, if this isn't the theme song of the last few days I don't know what is. I just can't stop listening to it, even though some wags say another Smiths classic, "Shoplifters of the World Unite and Take Over" might be a more appropriate anthem.

Stand and deliver, the old highwayman's code.

The Clash's "White Riot" and "London's Burning" have their place. These riots are as much about a cathartic violence and a momentary feeling of power for the powerless and disenfranchised as they are about opportunistic looting. So violent thrashing songs like these two from the Clash might seem more appropriate. Although the Clash often sang songs of solidarity and collective action with a clear political agenda, which a riot for kit doesn't have.

I bet the rioters were listening to something a little more contemporary though, given their age.

Dig Franz Fanon for the first and last word on the cathartic violence of decolonization. Make no mistake. We are decolonizing ourselves. From banker occupation. And it is far from over. Far from over. Far from over indeed. In fact, it is just beginning.

I don't think their gated communities and their dog armies and their special forces will help them in the end.

Since the late 1970s, TPTB thought they could just fuck us as long and hard as they wanted and nothing would happen, even as they dissolved the most marginal and hypocritical of social contracts into the most brazen, systematic, relentless and remorseless corporatocracy possible.

They were wrong. The people are waking up all across the world, even if in ways sometimes inchoate and random.

The masses know instinctively now that their governments no longer represent them and the thought of working for redress though the political system is a farce, and not even a funny one at that.

Sorry, plutocratic assholes. You brought that on yourselves. Payback's a bitch. So is karma.

The wheels of justice grind slow but they grind exceedingly fine.

In spite of rage as a partial fuel for the England riots, there is something about the feyness and perfect poppiness of this song that makes it the soundtrack of the riots in my mind's ear. And this is from a die-hard, life-long Clash fan. There is also something intensely harrowing in its very feyness and perfect poppiness

From all accounts, the vast majority of the rioters are teens and pre-teens. Guess cutting the summer programs to feed the insatiable maw of international finance capital wasn't such a good idea after all, was it Mr. Cameron?

Doubtless, almost all of the rioters weren't even born when this song came out. Nevertheless, it reverberates with me. And with many another aging hipster, to go by the Youtube comment boards.

I thought the Smiths were a little too swishy and soft for me as a teen when I first heard them. But then my sainted uncle, more of an older brother really, said they were one of his favorite bands and he was hardcore punk. So I reassessed. Indeed, the Smiths were genius. Timeless they remain. Highwater marks. Your first impression is not always correct. As one of my favorite early modernists, Picabia, said "our heads are round so our thoughts may change directions."

Best commentary on the riots here.

BBC live feed on the riots here.

Hang the DJ (of international finance capital)

2011-08-09T00:57:00.000-07:00

I have only been this scared of the black swans twice before.

The first time was a particular date when many on the blogosphere thought Israel was going to attack Iran about a year or two ago. That still not off the table. Watch for a false flag terrorist attack in America from Israel again, especially with a U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood expected this September.

The second was the “tipping point” Half Past Human predicted in January 2011. It was right around when Congresswoman Giffords got shot in Tucson. I don’t think that was the “tipping point” itself. I think maybe that a kind of line unseen that was crossed on or about that time.

Then, the rioting started in Greece, which still percolates. Then the Arab Spring, which still percolates. Then Wisconsin, to a degree. Now London, Spain, and even Israel are either rioting and/or demonstrating en masse.

And now, the third.

Thursday the markets lost 5% worldwide. Friday Amerikkka’s sovereign debt got downgraded by Standard and Poors. Monday, they downgraded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt too. Asian markets seem to be stabilizing on Tuesday after heavy early losses, which is good. What will Tuesday bring at the NYSE? We can only keep our fingers crossed. If it is another 5% loss, the system could buckle. Gold has already popped through the roof of $1,700. Last time I check the Swiss Franc a few months ago, it was at 1.10 on the dollar. Today it’s 1.33. Holy fucking shit! That is almost a 20% gain in a few months!

There is “Panic in the Streets of London,” as the Smiths say and “London’s Burning” as the Clash noticed. The Youtube comments section are fascinating, all atwitter with the relevance of these songs to the events of the last few days in the England.

It is because the "Youth are Getting Restless" (Bad Brains).

It’s a lot like the most recent L.A. riots: legitimate but totally unbridled directionless rage ultimately resolving itself in looting: the consumerist paradise: free stuff!

Free tuff!

It’s a reversion to the 1970s, the worst period of urban decay in the big cities in the core states of global capitalism but aided and abetted by cell phones, texting, and live television, and the decimation of social welfare and education programs as every "major capitalist country" abandons any pretense of the consent of the governed, any pretense of serving the people, and instead absolutely unconditionally give themselves and their countries away to the banksters in the most brazen and complete way possible.

The new technologies help create insta-mobs. Like Vancouver a few weeks ago. Talk about pointless.

Personally, I think it is time for every body to say “I’m Going to Run to the City of Refuge,” like Blind Willie Johnson suggested.

Find your village of refuge. Move towards it. Now is the time. Don't wait. The cities will be painful.

US-Sino Currency Rap Battle

2011-08-06T00:16:00.000-07:00

Remy: Raise The Debt Ceiling Rap

2011-08-06T00:05:00.000-07:00

Lifting the Veil: Obama and the Failure of Capitalist Democracy

2011-07-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

Mos Def Close Edge

2011-07-25T01:47:00.000-07:00

Keep Cool Babylon by Ras Michael

2011-07-24T02:02:00.000-07:00

I never said I was that mature

2011-07-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Big Wang Theory

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

I've watched this 20 times in the last week.

Black swans taking wing

2011-06-29T02:52:00.000-07:00

There are so many black swans taking wing, I can barely keep track.

Like Vault-Co says: You had better pack it. Because itz coming.

Hard hitting and never quitting

2011-06-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

part 1 of 4

A few years old - but timeless.

Harold Pinter's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

Dear Obama fans: all your man did was codify, legalize, and better sell all of this horrific shit

Pinter: a master of words and morality at the height of his powers.

800 views on You Tube after two years. This planet is doomed.

part 2 of 4

part 3 of 4

part 4 of 4

A99 Operation Empire State Rebellion - Communication #1

2011-05-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says

"I’m talking about instances where the government is relying on secret interpretations of what the law says without telling the public what those interpretations are," Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says, "and the reliance on secret interpretations of the law is growing."

Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many - they are few

- P.B. Shelley "The Mask of Anarchy"

Geronimo, Prescott Bush and Osama bin Laden

2011-05-08T15:31:00.001-07:00

So apparently the codename for the operation which just killed a man who has probably been dead of natural causes for about decade was "Geronimo." Or maybe that was the name of the "target." Who knows? It is hard to keep up with the ever-changing storyline of this clusterfuck of a psy-op.

Either way, take your pick, it won't affect the punchline of this story.

We have also seen a fair amount of news lately from pissed-off native Americans registering their frustration that, yet again, a native American name and symbol is being unfairly vilified and disrespected.

Look at all of those sport team names for starters. Pop cultural appropriation of native American names and symbols seems like one of the last socially acceptable forms of racism in Amerikkka.

What I have not been seeing, however, are any stories linking this latest use of the name "Geronimo" to the Skull and Bones, even in the normally vigilant blogosphere.

I am sure a lot of you out there know about the Yale secret society Skull and Bones, an old and spooky outfit with immense power, far disproportionate to its 15 person a year size.

If you know about Skull and Bones, you probably also know about the persistent rumor that Prescott Bush stole Geronimo's skull, femurs, and horse tack from his grave.

According to many reports, like this one from a few years ago on CNN, it may be a bit more than a rumor. It may actually be true.

It may be a coincidence that this recent "commando operation" or its purported target was named Geronimo. I mean, there are only a limited number of widely-known superstars in the pantheon of resistance to the Amerikkkan Empire and they might have just picked one of the more prominent ones nearly at random.

Or, could it be another episode in the ancient and ongoing war of symbols, a case of the super elite hiding a big "fuck you!" to the masses in plain sight?

TPTB might be saying: "we subdued Geronimo by force for daring to confront the Empire, lied about an offer of amnesty, and kept him as a prisoner of war until his death. Then, one or more members of a super elite secret society desecrated his bones, stole them, tried to capture their power by transporting them for permanent display in their headquarters, and then we named the operation/target of a transparent psy-op after this very desecration!"

It is not impossible. Oftentimes, coded symbolic references to their most vicious and brazen accomplishments in crushing The People under foot are exactly what TPTB most love to hide in plain sight.

Could this be such a case?

Fanzine post for Casey Abrams from American Idol

2011-05-06T17:17:00.000-07:00

I don't even remember how I ran into this guy. It wasn't from watching the televitz. But first I encountered his Austin audition for American Idol, embedded above.

Wow.

Big ups to Steve Tyler and his long career, but Casey Abrams is already a better singer than he ever was.

Abrams' version of "I Don't Need No Doctor" for the audition was at least as good as Ray Charles' original.

Which is saying something.

Lord knows I love me some sweet soul music.

To continue to savor its delectable pleasures well into my old age is one reason I am not already dead.

If he stays off the drugs, remains humble, and his voice doesn't change radically as he ages, he could enter The Pantheon of soul singers, rock-soul singers, and jazz bassists.

So then I watched everything he had on youtube and after awhile discovered his pre-Idol youtube channel pierceabrams, and I watched all of that.

He can do 6 and 8 part harmony - with his own damn self!

He has jazz as awesomely as he has got soul, and a little rock-and-roll never hurt nobody.

Idol voted him off? Insane. Amerikkka, quit being so incorrigibly nutz. It will not end well for you.

Good he got voted off. More freedom for him. Less contractual obligations.

He is destined for far greater things than Carrie Underwood and all of the other "successful" alumni of that factory.

His music teacher, Marshall Raymond Hawkins, should be very proud of all of his pupils, and especially proud of this one.

This is an absolutely unhinged monster talent before us!

This is even more spectacular than the last hyper-ringer that also gave me goose bumps, Susan Boyle.

I hope he keeps it together and gives us many decades of awesome music.

Amerika is devouring its children

2011-05-03T07:11:00.000-07:00

Absent appropriate flexibility, the fusion of quantum physics, deep ecology, “prophetic pragmatism,” and any number of other sources of deep and abiding wisdom one might care to mention which might help to create a new sense of the spiritual, a new sense of community with nature, and a new sense of social justice, will be that much harder to bring about. Absent this new conceptual framework for the coming paradigm shift, the extraordinarily painful and convulsive transition we are entering will be even more painful and convulsive. But perhaps there is no escape. Like all junkies, this junky civilization of the first world will probably have to hit bottom before it can begin to mend its ways. Unfortunately, this will cause suffering and death on an almost unfathomable scale.

As Nietzsche says, “the objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one's thoughts to cease to be aware of life." Nowhere is this more true than in America. America does not often inspire the moral courage needed to:

"desire the opposite - to be aware precisely of life, that is to say to suffer from life - so strongly? Because he realizes that he is in danger of being cheated out of himself, and that a kind of agreement exists to kidnap him out of his own cave. Then he bestirs himself, pricks up his ears, and resolves: 'I will remain my own!'"

Instead, America (and much of the rest of the world) use technology in such a way as to have no meaningful interaction with nature.

America and the first world’s last hope for survival is to create a cadre of people with transformed ways of being in the world who can 1) create the liberated territory of a new society, islands of alternative culture that grow into each other like a reef displacing the sea, 2) speak truth to power and isolate how evil is done, and 3) walk the long march through the primary institutions of society, emplacing righteous people in strategic positions of responsibility in the courts, media, think tanks, schools, and elsewhere.

This might be possible through education; it might not be. After all, as Nietzsche states, “to educate educators! But the first ones must educate themselves! And for these I write."

We must facilitate the immediate emergence and implementation of a philosophy of education for peace, social justice and sustainability, with domain content areas rectified accordingly to make visible the repression of the hidden curriculum. We must also reimagine the education encounter in a way that does not reiterate the existing social relations of domination, subordination, extrinsic motivation, and credentialing.

By waiving their obligation to provide informed consent as the governed in exchange for overconsumption and “protection” from fears manufactured by the powers that be themselves, the American people have grown accustomed to using material goods to satisfy non-material needs. They have become mired in a suspended state of preadolescence.

The same diagnosis goes for much of the rest of the “first world” as well. Education will have to play a central role in returning these polities to mental health, eventually. As the aphorism commonly attributed to Victor Hugo goes: “education is a race between history and catastrophe.” If education succeeds, then the world may stop tolerating economic and political systems that rob us of our natural joy, freedom, dignity, curiosity, and the full development of our faculties. Only then will we stop profaning the miracle of our ability to think, imagine, love, and use tools.

To regain our natural propensity to love, be creative, and live in harmonious connection with the earth blossom will require a major shift in character and a wholesale healing of perception. As Edward Dowling has said, “The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first the widespread delusion among the poor that we have it, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it."

Emmanuel Goldstein declared dead

2011-05-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

Emmanuel Goldstein and Barry Soetero enjoying a luau together

I subscribe to the theory that Osama died of natural causes around a decade ago, probably related to his kidneys.

But now Emmanuel Goldstein has been officially declared dead.

It knocks the royal wedding off the news. It knocks Obama's asinine fake new birth certificate off the news. It knocks the intervention in Libya off the news. It helps him draw attention away from his "national security" team reshuffle of warmongering imperialist scumbags. It helps him start the campaign season off with a bang.

I must say, politically, this is one of the best moves Barry has been put through.

Here's the crux though:

Will he use this to get out of our current world war, temporarily staving off disaster for the dollar in the process?

Or will Usreal use this as the perfect excuse for a false flag terror event to attack Iran or others and ratchet this cluster fuck up a few notches?

Cool Yugoslav public sculpture

2011-04-29T00:37:00.000-07:00

Neat stuff at this link.

Somewhere between Mestrovic, Goldworthy, and Stalin.

Interesting.

Research hat tip to Vaulty.

Birtherism, yet again

2011-04-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

So the Donald has nudged a new certificate out of the pResident.

I hate to agree with so many right wing idiots, but this still doesn't cut it.

I see some forensic problems right away. This irritates me because I am swimming upstream against a heavy current of mainstream media, which calls this all the most craven and racist nonsense.

I don't know. It doesn't matter in the least.

When I last gave a shit about the status of Obama's birth certificate, it was nothing more than my last burst of affection for the constitution.

That feeling has passed.

Amerikkkan government serves Israel, corporations, and militarism. That is its function. Insightful observers saw the hidden cues Obama was sending to these quarters during his candidacy. Therefore, we suffer no shock in him not delivering on his so-called "promises."

Oh dear

2011-04-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

The "paranoid" blogosphere has been wondering when TPTB would start making it difficult to even escape from the Kwa when the SHTF.

An insanely complicated and invasive new proposed passport application now under a public comment period seems like a major step in this direction.

Funny how this surfaced days after the IMF issued a report saying China's economy may surpass Amerikkka's by 2016.

Meanwhile, NASA admits the solar storm anticipated to arrive in December 2012 could devastate the electronics of the planet.

The rich getting richer, the poor get the picture

2011-04-25T00:27:00.000-07:00

It's the Inequality, Stupid

The One Percent

Wealth, Income, and Power

Dead among the Living: Zombie Politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism

Can We Live Free in an Unfree World

The Slow Death of the Middle Class

The two Americas

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Concentration Of Wealth

Greed is Not a Virtue

The Peasants Need Pitchforks

Citigroup Oct 16, 2005 Plutonomy Report Part 1

Tiny homes rock

2011-04-24T22:43:00.000-07:00

A low impact woodland home.

Tiny house blog

Want to live in a shipping container?

The year of mud: Cob and natural building

This tiny house

Lloyd's blog

The hermit's cabin

Small house society

Tumbleweed tiny house

Small house building

Living small catches on

You're going to build a what?

EPDM pond liner for living roof construction

U.S. Government Printing Office needs 350,934 National Detainee Handbooks printed by 29 April 2011

2011-04-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a larger screenshot of the above - which got pulled within minutes of being posted!

The U.S. Government needs 350,934 National Detainee Handbooks printed by 29 April 2011, even though the GPO solicitation only went out on 18 April! - from Cryptogon

Even though the solicitation got pulled, it is still in Google cache for now.

That is an awful lot of handbooks needed at what, for government procurement, is lightening speed.

WTF?!

BRICS tell dollar to go get bent

2011-04-20T02:42:00.000-07:00

"The BRICS group of emerging-market powers kept up the pressure on Thursday for a revamped global monetary system that relies less on the dollar and for a louder voice in international financial institutions." - from Yahoo Finance

Zoellick says world "one shock away from a full-blown crisis"

2011-04-20T02:37:00.000-07:00

"The president of the World Bank has warned that the world is 'one shock away from a full-blown crisis'." - from BBC

International sovereign debt default moving right along

2011-04-18T17:15:00.000-07:00

From a recent evaluation by the Standard & Poor's ratings agency -

"S&P affirmed the U.S. federal government's "AAA" rating but, for the first time, changed its long-term outlook to negative from stable, signaling there is at least a 33% chance that it will downgrade the country's debt rating within two years."

The Bronx Zoo snake names are all lame

2011-04-06T00:59:00.000-07:00

The five Bronx Zoo snake name finalists sucked.

My name, "slinky spice," should have been a nominee.

Alas, cruel fate.

Amerikkkan political prisoners must be set free!

2011-04-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

They are having a contest to name the snake.

I named her "slinky spice." It was one of the pet names I had for my last ex-girlfriend. But the reason I offered it is because I think it is also a compliment for all snake-like beings.

And it gives you three times to use the letter "s" in speaking about the suddenly special situation spawned by a certain snake circulating serendipitously through the streams of symbols we see daily.

But seriously; free all of the real political prisoners too.

The first reason to give a shit about twitter

2011-03-30T23:16:00.000-07:00

The escaped Bronx Zoo white cobra is having a good ol' time in the town so nice they named it twice, New York New York.

I hate all "social media" but this is actually pretty funny.

It gained 150,000 followers in a day!

Joe Bageant dead at 64

2011-03-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

Joe in Hopkins Village
1946-2011 R.I.P

That was worth a few deep soul sobs.

We volleyed a few emails back and forth once. What a treat that was.

The truly great writers still writing on the internet can be counted on one or two hands. We just lost another one. I loved his humor, his geopolitical and economic analysis, his sense of rootedness in the South, no matter where he was physically at the moment - and we both discovered Belize at about the same time.

But what kicks his work up to the next level, to genius, is his understanding of the cosmic nature of the above, its unity with the unseen.

As he said so often, the consensus reality is nothing more than a vast hologram emanating from the manufactured consent of the plebes.

I don't see how we can replace him. And lost just when we need him the most, on the cusp of the crashing down of this consensus reality, perhaps even on the cusp of a very slow and very painful yet nonetheless very definitive birth of the first inklings of sane and sustainable attitudes of humans towards each other and the planet.

We will pick up your torch, Brother Joe. Your words hit many of the people in just the right way and you can't do much better than that. They will reverberate. We will make sure of that.

In Art and Labor,

Stonefruit

Banker plows through a Critical Mass ride in Brazil

2011-03-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

At about 1:00, a vicious psychopath plows through a Critical Mass ride at 40 or 50mph.

This is what our overlords think of us. Which is to say nothing. Our lives, our health, our felicity is simply a joke to them.

Socializing the costs, privatizing the benefits

2011-03-10T18:28:00.000-08:00

Fighting Bob LaFollette - lead the way my brother!

PIMCO, the world's largest bond fund, just dropped all of its U.S. T-bills. Who will buy them when the private bank known as the Federal Reserve, which has been almost the only buyer for nearly a year, stops buying them, as it plans to in June 2011?

It is buying them with money it invents out of nothing. Digital currency not even worth the paper it is not printed on. An increase of the money supply that is sure to lead to hyper inflation. I can't believe it is not already here. That is a testament to the power of being a "reserve currency," not one to the strength of the dollar.

As so many commentators have being saying for so long: the dollar is about to become bird cage liner.

But the other candidates for reserve currency like the euro, yen, and yuan also have their own problems. One or more might also collapse along with the dollar.

The recent plethora of moves aspire to elevate IMF special drawing rights to the level of a new international currency.

As the Kwa empire and its dollar collapses, the "Northwest Territory" governors are trying to roll-back the gains of organized labor to the point of the Robber Baron era. Almost all of the putative gains we have made since then in statute have been chipped away at since Reagan and the PATCO strike.

From Madison, it reverberates.

Winning

2011-03-09T12:37:00.000-08:00

What an interesting case and very entertaining to watch.

Is he having a psychotic episode and spiraling into madness?

Quite possibly.

Is he also breaking a necessary taboo by criticising the nearly impervious therapeutic model that rules Amerikkkan mainstream thought, one which disallows madness and substance use as a response to the suffocating ennui and misery of everyday life in the "first world," a paradigm that would have us all adjust to insipid, death-in-life group norms in which we are all good "well adjusted" worker bees and consumer drones?

Quite possibly.

Are some of his rants poetry unseen since the height of French surrealist poetry in the early 20th century?

You betcha. Especially the one he gave wearing a red shirt.

Give it a listen.

The shit is no longer in mid-air

2011-02-24T16:00:00.000-08:00

It has hit the fan

I have been glued to Al Jazeera and RT lately, watching all of this unfold.

I think of the counsel I gave myself and others a couple of years ago.

Big troubles ahead. Adopt the lessons of nature. Play dead, camouflage, retreat, evade the authorities until they play themselves out, etc.

Some of my other more rebellious friends said: "Fuck that - I want to lead it!"

The marvelous mayhem some have prophesied is finally here. And it all looks so entertaining and righteous, I might finally be interested in participating.

We are many, they are few.

Once you hit a critical mass and the masses get over their fear factor and their energy is unleashed, it is game over for the fascist dogs.

We win. They lose. TPTB know this.

As we look at international events, let us not forget to factor in Wisconsin. This turmoil is about to spread to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and every other Murkin state that is bankrupt. Which is to say practically all of them.

California going apeshit will be the game changer.

Maybe the salvation or impetus will not come from the union of far right and far left - although this is still probable, eventually, in some incarnation, the consequence from something that did not intend to unite them. Maybe for now it is the union of the proles in the third world living on $2/day and the proles in the first world who can't make ends meet on even $200/day of household income.

This world revolution is not stopping at Tunisia, Egypt, or Libya. Or Bahrain, Yemen, or Saudi Arabia. This is going worldwide.

All of the evil doers will face their karmic bill in short order. It's not stopping in August with the astrological Saturn-Pluto-Uranus T square either. This is going to extend well into next year.

It is the apocalypse. Not in the popular sense of universal destruction but in the original root sense of the word: an unveiling.

The scum-sucking money changers, theocrats, and princes are all being unveiled. There are not enough hotel rooms in the Davos Switzerland of the mind to help them all plan a coordinated response.

But, alas, not without plenty of suffering. Unnecessary? Perhaps. Nobody wishes suffering upon anyone but perhaps it is necessary, according to archetypal and ritualistic patterns operating on a vast, timeless, and cosmic scale.

The ultimate repercussions of these initial shock waves will be almost unimaginable. Fiat currencies will collapse. A nuclear WW III is possible. Mass starvation likely.

I caught a robber red handed yesterday. I was downstairs in the family duplex, heard footsteps above when there should not have been any, rushed up and snatched back two laptops a guy was splitting with. I think he was an emissary from the future. The shock waves of the future sometimes blast backwards into time as their supernova explode.

As I watch Libya implode, I am intrigued.

Qadafi is the perfect example of a guy who is brilliant, savvy and practical, and yet also totally bat-shit crazy. Does he reside on the fine line between genius and madness? Maybe there is no line, just a conflation of both?

This nut has already killed 1,000-2,000 people in this latest uprising with his goons and air strikes. In a country of only 6.5 million.

The response of the west has been muted. Why? Because of business? To some extent, sure, but not really.

Because they know this tsunami will be at their doorsteps in short order and this is exactly how they will respond, because they don't have anything else in their bag of tricks, beyond impulses for command and control.

His attacks are crimes against humanity? This is laughable. I mean, of course they are, but when this shit hits the core states of global capitalism: how they will respond? Exactly like this.

When Amerikkka finally does all this type of shit, the world will initially be befuddled and at a loss for words. It was bad when Libya did it but OK when the Kwa did it?

Not for long.

Foreign governments then will basically repeat what Obama and Clinton are finally saying now. But by then, of course, Obama, Clinton and every other shill will be talking about the need for law and order, constitutionality, and the whole boatload of bloviating bullshit. A mask for raw power We The People will easily see through.

Responsibility. Some of it is ascribed from your birth, some of it is achieved from how you lived your life. All of it must be taken seriously, or there will be hell to pay, on multiple levels.

It is time for all leaders, activists, educators, artists, intellectuals, clowns, shamans, weirdos, and roustabouts to know their responsibility and live up to it, finally and definitively.

The stakes are high and the anguish ample but the birth pains of a new order are never easy.

Unfortunately there is no other path forward.

Meanwhile, there is a military readiness exercise in three places in the Kwa, one of which is where I live. Convoys of military choppers transit the skies by the hour.

It feels like war already.

One of these days

2011-02-16T22:32:00.000-08:00

We are going to have to make them stop!

Home

2011-02-15T22:35:00.000-08:00

There is so much going on in the world today, economically, environmentally, geopolitically, it doesn't seem necessary to comment too much.

We all know what we need to do.

So now, for our edification and aesthetic enjoyment, may I suggest this beautiful video about nature and the evolution of humyn's place within it.

My only criticism with it is its adherence to global warm thinkery.

UFO over the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount

2011-02-04T15:37:00.000-08:00

From a distance...

...and more close up.

An extraordinarily bizarre UFO sighting over the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount was captured on tape by multiple videographers from multiple positions in Jerusalem recently.

Consider this...

Over one of the most sacred sites on the planet.

In this time of turmoil in the Middle East.

Against the backdrop of so many other recent UFO sightings worldwide and so much attention to UFOs and visitors from beyond in current events and infotainment lately.

Do you still think I am overstating it when I say we have entered the weird times?

Put down the Cheetos. Do your homework. And pack your rice.

And a child shall lead us

2011-02-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

Alexandria, February 4, 2011, 5:22pm local time

The world is on fire but the people are on point

2011-02-02T19:16:00.000-08:00

photo from Al Jazeera English
approximately 5:20 am or shortly before
Thursday 2, 2011, Cairo local time

Follow the latest from the best sources in international news, Al Jazeera and Russia TV.

Al Jazeera: live blogging

Russia TV: video coverage

It is a good time to live!

2011-02-01T13:42:00.000-08:00

The earth is going absolutely bat shit, with flooding, earthquakes, volcanoes blowing their stacks, magnetic pole reversal, and a solar maximum due soon to rock our world to the core. You name it. If it can get weird in the earth sciences, it is doing it now.

All at once.

Civil society is going bat shit as well.

Egypt is nothing but pure inspiration at this point.

All power and all solidarity to the people of that proud, ancient civilization!

They are not only cleaning up after their demonstrations, they are recycling, they are pushing the water of water cannons down into the sewers.

This is incredible and sublime. Such dignified comportment in the midst of such turmoil!

It won't stop with Egypt. You can be sure of that. It won't stop with the Arab or Muslim world either.

This is going to hit country after country after country, around the world. That is why China is censoring coverage of events in Egypt, for one.

The pent-up grievances of the regular folk in the countries run by corporatist/bankster/imperialist/authoritarian swine - which is to say, virtually all of them - are about to explode.

Not all of the revolutions to come will have the dignity of Egypt's. Some will be weird, wild, rollicking, and punctuated by mayhem.

We will also have food shortages and Mother Nature to deal with.

But, on balance, this will be the year of the people.

Old, seemingly indestructible paradigms are dissolving before our very eyes.

The people world-wide are awakening from an ancient slumber. I concur with good ol' Les Visible.

The shit storm has arrived.

It will be messy but on balance it will be a good thing - for the people.

But not for the TPTB. Every decision they make from now on will be wrong and only make them more insecure and vulnerable.

Egypt hit the kill switch on cell phones, the internet, and trains. Do you think that will stop the people? I don't. The core states of global capitalism will try the same when the "contagion" gets to them. They will fail too.

Our transition to freedom, social justice, environmental sanity, and personal health and development is just about to become greatly accelerated!

This is going to be fun! Or at least interesting.

Hoka hey, it is a good time to live!

Egypt on fire

2011-01-30T14:52:00.000-08:00

First Tunisia and Lebanon.

Then Egypt. These protests began Tuesday. They are not even a week old.

Mubarak and his family do not stand a fucking chance. His son has already fled.

Just look at the video.

This type of courage and desparation signals one thing and one thing only: the end of a regime.

Next Saudi Arabia, then perhaps much of the rest of the world.

Food prices will be a major driver.

Meanwhile, a barometer of the MSM like yahoo.com is leading with "the best dips to serve at your Super Bowl party!"

The weird times have begun in earnest.

This is your brain on reality

2011-01-22T14:26:00.000-08:00

"Normal" 1950s Amerikkkan housewife on LSD

Betelgeuse may be about to explode into a supernova and appear as a second sun to our eyes.

The magnetic poles of the earth may be reversing.

There are massive storms, snow, and flooding worldwide. Millions are homeless.

Food prices are about to surge. Shortages may occur.

August authorities are expecting food riots and war-gaming for massive urban unrest in the core states of global capitalism. In many of these countries, it has already begun.

There are strange mass animal die offs worldwide.

Volcanic activity is increasing worldwide.

Meanwhile, the TPTB continue to do the only thing they know how to do: enhance command, control, and surveillance. They just launched the largest ever rocket on the west coast, at Vandenberg, for the National Reconnaissance Office. The payload is classified but suspected to be a new high resolution spy satellite.

Even though I think we have entered the weird time, I think it is only going to get weirder. Weirdness equal to what that housewife saw.

While I don't know if the definitive caesura I crave will ever arrive, perhaps the events I am thinking about have such a massive, geological, cosmic time frame in their unfolding that a transitional phase of even a few decades is the caesura.

A day on

2011-01-17T12:37:00.000-08:00

As they say, MLK day is "a day on, not a day off."

Let us utilize his implacable moral courage and sophisticated political, philosophical, and theological analysis to examine ourselves and the social world we live in, not only one day a year, but everyday, especially in this time of trial and tribulation, in this time of apocalypse (which is not a universal destruction but rather an unveiling).

And what it unveils is that Babylon is falling.

Everything MLK said was spot on. The content of his prophetic outrage has never been responded to by "the system" in any meaningful way. In fact, everything he identified as an abomination has gotten much, much worse.

On Monday, January 10, the Department of Defense's general counsel Jeh C. Johnson said MLK would support the permanent wargasm.

"I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack."

So wicked. So foul.

Anyone unfortunate, stupid, deluded, or bored enough to still be paying attention to the MSM has been subject to saturation coverage of the Tuscon shooting and fawning adulation of Obama's speech given there, which glorified the state as much as it consoled anybody.

Listen, he authorized a Predator drone strike in the sovereign country of Pakistan on the first day or so of his pResidency and has escalated their usage even over and above that of his giggling blood-soaked mass-murdering predecessor.

Obama does not giggle.

Each attack kills 2-3 times more than were killed recently in Tuscon, at a minimum.

1.4 million have been killed in the other "theater of operations," Iraq.

The Kwa keeps these wars invisible to itself. These wars are not invisible to other people. Virtually every other country in the world see them and excoriate them, except perhaps Britain and Israel. They are certainly not invisible to the people being slaughtered in Pashtun wedding parties by unseen Predator drones.

A million have been made homeless by recent flooding in Sri Lanka.

An area greater than the size of France and Germany combined is under water in Australia.

Over 600 are dead from flooding in Brazil.

The litany of horrors could go on ad infinitum but none of them of covered by the pack "journalism" (sic) of the MSM.

Don't satisfied with the last 15 seconds of MLK's speech in Memphis the night before he was killed by covert Amerikkkan state power, as the civil trial regarding his assassination found. Listen to the whole thing.

Then live up to it.

Is the New Madrid fault line about to blow its stack?

2011-01-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

It's tough being a bird in the South lately

I'll get up to New Madrid in second, but first, a news mash up.

Anyone who still doubts Obama is anything but a toady of Wall Street, Big Business, and the existing power structure need look no further than the appointment of William Daley, JP Morgan Chase executive and brother of Chicago mayor Richard Daley, as new White House Chief of Staff to relieve them of those doubts. This from a president who told "60 Minutes" in 2009 that he "did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street."

Horseshit, liar.

That is exactly why you ran and even the Obots are finally starting to figure that out. Of course, the bloviating punditocracy is spinning Daley as a "centrist," which is a code word in pundit-speak for "fuck the liberals, they have no where else to go, and keep capitulating to Big Business on every front."

All this to attract those non-existent swing voters.

Meanwhile, the orderly movement away from the dollar as the international currency of reserve continues apace with the first issuance of yuan-denominated bonds by the World Bank. Although it was relatively small, only $76 million, and sold entirely in Hong Kong, whose yuan deposits have exploded by more than 150% in six months to October 2010. With it, the World Bank joined a number of other entities that have already floated yuan-denominated bonds, such as the Asian Development Bank, McDonald's, and Caterpillar.

With China poised to become the third-largest stakeholder in the World Bank after the United States and Japan, starting to buy PIIGS paper (potentially “saving” the euro and indebting the Eurozone to China and the yuan), and agreeing, with Russia, to conduct bilateral trade in each other’s currencies last month, it will be interesting to see what happens to the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights. It is currently a basket based on the dollar, euro, pound, and yen.

Given that Obama has pretty much solidified his administration as a third term for Bush, it will not be long before the United States is completely isolated on the world geopolitical stage, with only Great Britain, Israel, and possibly Japan as significant allies. The rapidly rising power bloc of China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Brazil (and perhaps India, although they are masters of playing both sides off the middle) might decide to apply the coup d’grace to the tottering American empire by either creating a new international currency of reserve on their own or muscling the dollar off the IMF Special Drawing Rights and replacing it with one or more of their own currencies. This might not be an entirely fiat currency either. It might be linked to a basket of commodities.

The American deficit is closer to $200 trillion than the $14 trillion figure being bandied about during the current discussions about raising the debt ceiling. A telling symptom of the collapse of international investor confidence in the dollar can be seen very clearly in one simple fact. Foreign buyers have stopped showing up at Treasury bill auctions. The Federal Reserve has been the main buyer for the last six months and they plan on buying $600 billion more in 2011, the majority of what is planned for sale this year.

So the Federal Reserve invents money out of thin air and uses it to buy the unwanted debt of a bankrupt country.

As some official from, I think, the Nixon administration once said "that which cannot go on forever, won’t." Indeed. If we make it through 2011 without a dollar crash or hyperinflation, I would be surprised.

How about that national security insider, John Wheeler, who apparently had very high-level expertise in aerospace, cyberwarfare, and chemical and biological warfare, found dead in a Delaware landfill after witnesses in a Wilmington parking lot and train station found him looking so "disoriented and disheveled that he was mistaken for a homeless person?" Police were said to have "spent the weekend searching Wheeler’s homes where, it reported, floorboards had been removed from the kitchen."

Lord only knows whose toes he stepped on and how.

It also appears there has been another unexplained missile launch on January 2 like the one off of Los Angeles in November of last year. This time, it was off of the coast of Texas, at Padre National Seashore near Corpus Christi. It headed straight up and was much, much faster than the one off of Los Angeles.

Could the Chinese be playing a game of cat and mouse? Could their submarine technology have possibly gotten that good? Was the Newfoundland "missile" last year related to these two "missiles?"

There has been a spate of mass animal die-offs world-wide.

Click here to view a worldwide map.

Especially troubling are those located on and around the New Madrid fault line where Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee meet.

These include approximately 5,000 blackbirds falling from the sky in Bebee, Louisiana on January 1 dead of (according to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission) "acute physical trauma leading to internal hemorrhage," 450 grackles, starlings, brown-headed cowbirds and red-winged blackbirds dead near Baton Rouge, Louisiana on January 4 of broken beaks and backs, dozens of dead blackbirds in a Gilbertsville, Kentucky woman’s yard, and 100,000 dead drumfish along a 20 mile stretch of the Arkansas River in Franklin County, Arkansas.

The New Madrid Fault Line was the site of four of the largest North American earthquakes in recorded history, all approximately 8.0, in a three month span between December 1811 and February 1812. Because this is also the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee Rivers, the ground here is highly saturated and apparently has the potential to become essentially liquid during quakes of that magnitude.

"In a report filed in November 2008, The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that a serious earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone could result in "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States," further predicting "widespread and catastrophic" damage across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and particularly Tennessee."

Animals are well known for their sensitivity to the time right before major earthquakes. Shifting fault lines might also be releasing poisonous subterranean gases. Could all the oil that escaped from the BP disaster have affected the plate tectonics? Could the relatively rapid migration of the magnetic North Pole towards Russia be throwing animals off? Some say we might be in for a magnetic pole reversal soon too.

Is the New Madrid fault line about to blow its stack?

What if there was a New Madrid earthquake in the 8.0-9.0 range AND the Yellowstone super-volcano blew?

Then it would be game over for the 'Kwa.

"Please feel free to email me" (revised and enlarged)

2010-12-24T14:54:00.000-08:00

“It’s hard to eat shit
Without having visions
And when they’re real
The world’s like heaven.”
– Allen Ginsberg

I quit my slave labor university job and moved out of my rental house which was collapsing all around me and just started stealth camping in the hidden pockets of Honolulu. I had a regular circuit of about 7 or 8 places I went to in rotation, although I spent most of my time up on a ridge above campus.

I thought I would get to “all but dissertation” in my PhD in a matter of weeks but it just kept dragging on and on and on. I love living outdoors now and then but it was starting to be a bit of drag. Rainy season didn’t stop when it usually does in March but just kept going on and on and on. I was schlepping 50 pounds in a big backpack a few miles on a bike almost daily.

My mom’s downstairs tenants of five years moved out. We cut a deal. I’ll help you fix up the downstairs in exchange for you letting me live there for a few weeks. This was late May.

I put up a profile and some pictures on a free dating website. Same as usual when I try my hand at this. I send out 100 little textual probes and get a tiny handful of responses, all of which fizzle out within a few back and forths. Except for one. One chick dug my profile and sent me a note. I checked out her profile. In one of her photos, she was holding two pistols across her chest in an x, wearing a long black skirt, red stockings, a funky wool hat, sunglasses, and a wry expression. She was Russian. A lawyer. A New Yorker.

Hmmm. Intriguing.

Date: May 24, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: aloha
To: T.R. Ponchik

Thanks for complimenting my profile.

Pistol packing and black-belted? What are you, Putin's niece?

Date: May 24, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: aloha
To: Stonefruit

Hi :) I like your sense of humor. Tell me a bit about yourself pls! Where/with whom do you live? Single? Kid(s)? Job(s)?

Date: May 24, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: RE: aloha
To: T.R. Ponchik

Thanks, I think humor is very important.

I live by myself in the neighborhood I grew up in, Kalihi. Single. No kids. My last job was at the University of Hawaii as a professional education researcher, but I quit to write my dissertation. Like my profile said, my work has always been in school administration, education law at the state legislature, and non-profit administration. Some teaching. Stuff that is gratifying but doesn't pay well.

My mother, father, and ex-wife are all lawyers and I've grown up around the culture my entire life. I've known hundreds of them and can count the ones I like on one or two hands.

I feel some insight into the Slavic soul from a junior year abroad as an exchange student in Belgrade. Recently I traveled back to the former Yugoslavia, so I saw it before and after the war.

Your turn. Why law? Why did you leave Russia? Why did you come to Hawaii?

Date: May 24, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: aloha
To: Stonefruit

I live on X St.! Sounds like we are neighbors?

Why law? Why leave Russia? Why Hawaii? Serious questions! But would take way too long to respond in writing. Running out in a few minutes to take my kid to gymnastics. Perhaps, if you'd like, we could chat over coffee or a drink? It is the most efficient way to get to know each other and ascertain chemistry, don’t u agree?

We could move to texting, if you'd like?

Date: May 24, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re: aloha
To: T.R. Ponchik

We are indeed neighbors. Drinks or coffee sounds great. Maybe something in the neighborhood?

We can text. My number is X.

I didn't see any Ponchik in the Hawaii Bar Association face book.

(I took her to a friend's backyard BBQ for our first date. I knew that would be a good call. She is a malahini (new to Hawaii) and a backyard BBQ would give her a good slice of island culture. There would also be a lot of people, so we wouldn’t have the pressure of constant one-on-one attention during our first date.

I rolled up to the intersection she identified as being near her house in my mom’s Austin mini. She was in North Carolina sorting out her parent’s estate after the recent death of her father, my granddad.

T.R. showed up at the side of the car and dropped her phone getting in. It seemed like she was flustered, but in a good cute way; like “this seems interesting – whoops – my phone!” She got in. She was wearing glittery eye shadow.

“That glitter is gonna make me lose my sense of direction on the road!” I said.

She laughed and smiled. We stopped at a grocery store on the way and bought some oysters for grilling and condiments, lemon and Tabasco, seasame oil and shoyu.

It took me a little while to locate the party even though I had lived in that neighborhood for six years as a teenager. I finally found it. I parked and we walked up a steep wet driveway into the dark but towards the noise, a small well-lit house on the side of steep ridge.

I shook the hands of the men I knew there and kissed the cheeks of the women; our standard island greeting.

From then on, T.R. and I grilled oysters and pretty much ignored the party, happy to be digging each other and learning about one another’s backgrounds. She had a Harvard B.A. and a Yale J.D. She wasn’t no idiot. Pretty hot too. Tall skinny Russian Jew. She went to the “fame high school” in New York City for painting after emigrating from Russia at 13.

Alright! Arty! Bonus points!

Date: May 25, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Thanks! I had a great time last night.

Date: May 25, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

Me too.

Date: May 25, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Let me know if you'd like to hang out again some time!

Date: May 25, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

I surely would. Anytime.

Date: May 26, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Guess u prefer not to text? ;) I have a nanny this afternoon. R u free?

(I’m thinking “nanny?! Take care of your own damn children.”)

Date: May 26, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

I am free this afternoon. What is your pleasure? I'd be happy to show you some highlights of our neighborhood, or whatever strikes your fancy.

Date: May 26, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Nanny arrives at 2:30 pm. I wanted to bodyboard. Called surf report but doesn't sound like there's much surf. I would love to go on an adventure with you! In the neighborhood or otherwise. Hoping your dealer got back to you! ;)

(Weed dealer that is.)

Date: May 26, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: RE: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

If you want to get your gills wet, we can, even tho there is no surf today. There's always something at Sandy’s or Makapuu at least.

We can swing by my friend's place on the way but he's still not answering my calls.

Date: May 26, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Sandy’s or Makapuu sounds fun! When should I be ready?

Date: May 26, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: RE: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

We can go now, but I’m car less. Map quest X street.

Date: May 26, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Just left you a vm - see u in 15-20 min?

Date: May 26, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

Perfect

(She rolled up in a BMW 635 with one side smashed in.

"What happened here?" I asked.

"Oh, I hit the wall while I was going down the driveway of a parking garage."

Hmmm. OK. I think I'll drive. Less trouble telling directions too. If she was new to town, she wouldn't have known how to get where I wanted her to go.

I took her to Spitting Caves on the way to surfing, an incredibly beautiful 60 foot rocky cliff on the sea. Two fisherman guarded their poles down by the surf. We ensconced ourselves in a brushy nook in the heights above them. She said “you’re cute!” and we dove into one another and started making out. Kissing, sucking on her little bitty titties – oh, one is pierced – feeling up her cunt – oh, it’s pierced too.

Damn, we might have a freak on our hands! Will those fishermen see us? Ah, who cares.

We spent so much time making out we never got around to surfing.

On the way back to town she mentioned a Bloodhound Gang song she liked. Neither of us could remember the title, even when she recited most of the lyrics. I recognized it right away. I like the Bloodhound Gang too. “You’ve had enough of two hand touch, you like it rough.” I even called my best friend, who had turned me on to them in the first place, but he couldn't remember the song title from the lyrics either. Finally, the google machine helped me figure out which one it was. I bit torrented it, and sent her the file.

Within two weeks of meeting one another, we were professing love and discussing baby names. I was announcing my ownership over her, to her delight. For the next two months we were inseparable, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, 24/7. Our base of operations had a lanai with a beautiful view of Honolulu harbor, surrounded by the yellow-white and ruby blossoms of Tahitian ginger and Plumeria.

By day we tooled all over Oahu in her BMW, which was an absolute joy to drive. It just purred. It was so heavy, so powerful, and made such a great noise. I gave her the full-on puka shell tour guide treatment, all the secret beautiful spots.

I did all the driving all the time and loved it.

But mostly we just surfed. All over the south shore during the swells of summer. Well, I surfed. She mostly bobbed and tried to avoid actual waves.

I surfed more that summer than the previous five years put together.

By night we macked. Grilled more oysters (which rapidly became our signature dish), shrimp, filet mignon, fish, whole calamari, vegetables marinated in extra virgin cold pressed olive oil, balsamic vinegar and garlic. Drank champagne with caviar. Drank nothing but top shelf whiskey, scotch, wine, and beer. Smoked the best weed. Listened to the best music. Watched the funniest videos (Chappelle, Ali G, Beavis and Butthead, Will Farrell, you name it). Looked at the greatest art. Read each other poetry and fucked each other senseless.

I tried to show her arty stuff I liked. She seemed to tolerate it but never quite get it or be interested by it. My curiosity is insatiable and omnivorous. I was surprised to learn hers was not, even though she had been such a great painter. It became a pattern. Many of the things I loved the most, I couldn't get her to understand.

Even Russian art movies like "Andrei Rubilev" by Tarkovsky. Nothing.

I remember one time I went to a volunteer work day at a local nature preserve/community garden in Kalihi valley, the valley I grew up cruising around in. I worked with 50 little kids from a Hawaiian culture-based charter school I have been associated with for a decade.

We built garden beds. It was adorable. After they left, the job candidates (myself among them) and a full-time AmeriCorps volunteer and eventually the main administrator took us on a tour of the land. Even though they had cut down the trees, I still retained a primordial muscle and visual memory of the topography of the land everywhere we stepped. The old Japanese tea house where I almost squatted. Everything.

When I came home to try and share my overwhelming bubbling enthusiasm with T.R., I could tell she didn't get it. At all. She is a New Yorker. What could my incredibly passionate love of being outdoors, native Hawaiian culture, and environmental conservation possible mean to her? Oh well, I still wanted to try and make it work.

For the honeymoon phase, it did. We just utterly fucking macked.

Nicknames were involved. She was monkey, penguin, penguin of my monkey, monkey of my penguin, baby cakes, cakes of my baby, milfy, milfy spice, apple of my eye and fire of my loins, and a few others. I had a bushel full of endearing nicknames for her. This is only a smattering. Naturally, they all had a back story too.

She said "you’re always finding ways to compliment me.” Like it was flattering but at the same time overkill from someone she wanted to be more authoritarian.

She was not without baggage. Within a couple weeks, I sensed she might be bipolar. I asked her straight up "are you bi-polar?"

"Sometimes."

Lord almighty, here it comes.

She admitted to smashing a new flat screen TV still in the box and not one but two functional laptops. She was still married and living with him in separate rooms (even as he dated three chicks while T.R. and I were together), a six year old daughter, $200,000 in debt for student loans and credit cards and needing to declare bankruptcy, a DUI in Arizona that (she alleged) prevented her from taking the bar in Hawaii, even though she had already been here for a year.

Even though she was still married, I ain’t the cheating type. It was all upfront with me and this guy. T.R. and I often went over to her place to steal his food and Glenlivet. She seemed to take special delight on these pillaging runs. He didn’t seem to mind too much, like he had become accustomed to a pattern.

"Varishka!" he called her, Russian for "thief."

Sometimes we even hung out with him and whatever girlfriend he was with at the time. We even went to the beach with girlfriend number 2 as a double date (even though he wound up dumping her by text too - what a tool - they deserve each other). For awhile, everything seemed cool. Not like I was sneaking around with a married woman. Hell no. I would never do that. We all knew the score. Boy, what a nice, mellow, and understanding boyfriend I was.

She said the marriage had been emotionally over for two or three years and they just hadn't gotten around to divorcing, in part because they had a kid. Hmmm. OK.

Early on she said “you can’t ever ask me about my previous sex life." Why, because of quantity or depravity? Perhaps both? What were we talking about here, dozens of lovers a year? Some uniquely hideous kink?

She did have a sexy latex two piece number and we were talking about a threesome from the start and she talked about S & M shows she used to go to in NYC (and she wanted to go to one in Honolulu during our relationship) and she talked about a few of the girls she had been with. “Don’t ever ask me about my sex life” is a phrase to surely pique a fella’s interest. I was right next to her when she called her doctor for the results of her STD test, so we could stop wearing condoms (or if it wasn’t a real call, she sure was a convincing actress).

So I thought “Well, if she is clean and the skills she has developed from her experience accrue to my benefit, I can live without knowing." But I there were definitely moments when I wanted to say “Tell me your entire sexual history, everything.” I’m no prude. I don’t think there is anything she could have said that would have shocked me except maybe incest I guess. I always figured there would be time to ask about that later but the clock ran out on that one.

Kind of like that time I was hanging out at a friends house and saw this image. Two of my friends, surfer boys, great physiques, both wearing rubber slippers, board shorts, no shirt, sunglasses, coconut frond hats, and each holding a gay Paris Hilton dog. They looked like twins. How funny. Masculine looking dudes with little gay dogs. How incongruous. I should have taken a picture. Ah well, I see them kind of often. There will always be time to restage the picture when I have a camera.

One of the dogs got run over a few days later.

In spite of all the warning signs and red flags, did I care? Hell no.

I was like Kanye West in one of the theme songs of our courtship, our honeymoon period: “you can’t tell me nothing.” We were strictly balling and I was macking as hard as I ever macked before. She was gorgeous and the sex was hot. Even though I couldn’t bust a nut inside her, which was weird. That had never happened before. I couldn't get her off either, which had also never happened before. Just like I had to finish myself off manually and blow a load at her eyes, so to she always had to finish herself off with her Hitachi Magic Wand, what she called her "Japanese girlfriend." But once she got rolling with that thing, look out. She might cum four or five times.

And porn! Tons of porn! She almost couldn't have sex without a laptop or two of youporn.com going. Well, definately she could but she sure preferred it on.

I did freaky shit with her I never did with anybody else. Fisted her twice, plenty of anal. She was dying for a threesome. So was I. Then she was dying for a foursome. “You think I’m gonna let some dude fuck you?” “Why not?” she asked. Oh fuck. This chick is gonna be trouble.

She loved to suck my cock, which she called "majestic." She made the “glug glug” choking-on-it sound instead of the light moan most chicks do, a real turn on. And she used to deep throat it all the way down, constantly, another turn on.

She swallowed gallon upon gallon of cum and never spit once. I blew loads all over her and you know what? She invariably slept with it on.

One time she said “Use me however whenever you want. If you want to fuck me and I’m asleep just start fucking me.”

She was a freak. I loved it.

She was also my height, tall for a woman. Her legs were even longer than mine. They were so long that when I bent her over for doggy style, her twat was still inches above my belly button and I had to shove her legs to the side to get the twat and the cock at the same altitudes.

She said many beautiful things. “You're the ideal man for me.” “You're so good for me.” “You’re so good for the twat.” "You are a masterful lover." I even believed it. I thought this had the potential to be my last relationship. I wanted to grow old with her.

I saved her life once when she got thrown against the rock walls of Point Panic, a surf break in town. I was bodysurfing, she was body boarding. I surfaced to look at her position every two or three minutes. I saw her fading into the rocks. Oh shit. I knew she wouldn't know what to do. I started hauling ass swimming towards her. After a minute, I am half way there and she has begun climbing up the rocks. Oh double shit. She can either climb out of it or get into even deeper, more dangerous territory. I finally arrived at the rocks after two minutes swimming top speed. She ducked behind boulders as the surf pounded in. Not bad. She is struggling but she has good instincts.

"Throw me your fins!” I shouted. She did. I stuffed them in my board shorts as I swam, hovering around her.

“Throw your board in the water!” She did. Waves slammed it into the rocks. Forget about that. That is the last thing I care about right now. She ducked to avoid another set of waves pounding into the rocks.

I shouted “come more down and jump into the water when I tell you, after this next wave!”

Crash went the wave. She lodged herself behind a boulder. As the spray and foam dissipated, she started inching her way cautiously down the rocks. I wanted her low enough to make a safe jump and to do it half way between waves.

“OK! Now! Jump!”

She did. I knew the next set of big waves was rolling in. I grabbed her and threw her arms around my torso in a lifeguard hold.

“Hang on baby. We’re moving out,” I told her and started swimming to safety out of the waves with a body as big as mine on my back.

It is like the visionary comedian Bill Hicks said: “It’s gonna take a very special woman to make me happy. Or, a lot of average ones.” I thought I was her special man. I would come to learn I was only one of her average ones.

She liked it rough in the sack. She wanted an authoritarian, domineering man. I've been a feminist my whole life but this has been changing lately, even before I met her. There are differences between men and women. We each have our natural roles and the natural male role it to run shit. We are bigger and stronger. It is simple evolutionary biology. We protect and provide for. The timing was incredible.

One time she said "you don't even rape me, hit me, spank me, or handcuff me," very peeved. Shit, you must be kidding. I bent her over my knee then and there and gave her five swats on each ass cheek.

One time she said "beating and spousal rape used to be common in the old days in Russia among the peasantry. It works.”

God, what a weirdo.

I brought up the legal implications of her attitude on occasion after that.

"If this relationship ever goes south, and I've actually done the kind of shit you keep asking for, that will be my ass, not yours."

"I wish you would leave that kind of talk out of the bedroom."

Well, it will still be my ass and not yours, no matter what you say now.

Then one time I spanked her again thinking that was what she wanted now and then and she said "It is so demeaning when you do that."

What the fuck did this chick want?!

She said she was a painter. I asked to see her portfolio. I was expecting to see some cute little sketches of this or that. But my god, she was absolutely incredible. She showed me a little book of snapshot-sized photos. They were all photographs of large color paintings she had made. I instantly thought of Chagall, Moreau, Redon, and some of the other most esoteric and visionary artists of the last two centuries. She was that good. But apparently quit since college on, except for some totally indifferent abstract crapspressionism over the last few years.

She showed me a Fiona Apple video of the interior of a house getting destroyed. I thought “I’ll see your gratuitous destruction and raise you arty” and showed her “Media Burn,” a famous media piece, a short video of a rocket car smashing into a wall of televisions, and some Chris Burden shorts, like the one of him getting shot and the one of him crawling naked over broken glass.

Early on in our relationship, it seemed like the cockier and more self-assured I was, the more she liked it. “I’ve already forgotten more about art than you will ever know." She responded with adoring approval. Then I saw the photo book of her amazing paintings and thought “maybe I spoke too soon.”

For two months, our honeymoon phase was incredible.

I took T.R. and her little girl to the state farm fair (food! rides! games! pig races!) and other things. She kept saying how great I was with her, over and over. It felt like it was true. It was fun being a step-dad. Quite draining because the girl was very precocious and an absolute sponge for all the attention you could give her, but a cute role for me nonetheless.

I even played host and puka shell tour guide again for her heavily-accented Russian family from New York City when they came to visit Honolulu. Now that I look back on it, her dad did have a lecherous aspect. Did he sexually abuse her? That would explain a lot. The sexual freaks in my life have almost always been sexually abused.

She had lots and lots of sexy underwear. She said “You dress for dinner, I dress for bed.” One time I was doing our usual dinner routine, grilling something delicious on the lanai. She came outside in this incredibly sexy puple ensemble. A bra/camosile, panty/ultra short skirt and garter strap and stocking thing.

People standing on the lanai are completely visible to anybody on the street just 15 feet below. Now, I dig people like the Beats, Henry Miller, and Anais Nin for bringing a frank discussion of complete erotic reality into contemporary literature and I think it shows in my writing. There is not a whole lot sexually I wouldn’t be willing to talk about with anyone adult. But even I have certain limits of propriety.

“T.R., you look fabulous but, c’mon, there are little kids riding bikes on the street.”

“So?! It won’t traumatize them.”

“Go put a robe on.”

I played tour guide for another friend of hers, a very young Yale law professor who was a major ass dweeb. I took them to some beautiful remote tidal pools at the bottom of a high cliff. They wouldn't have had any idea about this place without their native guide.

It seemed like I was settling into a role. I was an only child until 14, then one half brother for each set of divorced parents. I loved my solitude and guarded it jealously, even during my marriage, which probably helped to kill it. Maybe I would be a family man for the second half of my life?

During our honeymoon trip through the Pacific Northwest after being together for about two months (without her kid; she had been at her two sets of grandparents on the mainland for most of the summer), I thought about a hypothetical conversation with her husband: “Dude, I'm taking your women. I’m taking your wife and I’m taking your daughter.” Our trip was a combination of motels, camping, and visiting my friends and her family. It was incredible.

One night, it was a little dangerous. It was her first time camping, my 5 millioneth. We had a beautiful site right next to a medium sized but solidly pumping river. We were isolated, in the corner. Several spots were empty until the next occupied site. She was so excited to be there. At around 11pm she just started bouncing all over everywhere in our campsite. She even got up on our rental SUV's roof. Come down from there you silly goose. She is still bouncing around. Oh fuck, she is by the edge of the river. She could fall and smack her head or break a limb and we are hours from civilization. I started to get nervous and moved towards her. She stumbled on the river's edge. Oh shit! Ah, she only scraped her shins. She got off lucky. What a relief. That could have been bad.

“Ok, when we get back you're moving in with me.”

For awhile, it was awesome. I'm a step dad! Instant family! Just add water! The little girl made friends with other kiddies in the neighborhood, just like I had 35 years ago. T.R. said the girl had never had that before since they moved to Honolulu a year before. They didn’t know anyone. The little girl’s last neighborhood didn’t have any kids. Her last school sucked and she didn’t make any friends there either. I bet she was the only snowflake there.

We moved in together. Her husband had arranged to move her enormous amount of shit out of storage and into our place. When we got back from out trip, I couldn't believe it. It was neck deep in every room. How am I going to fit it all in? But I did it and built two disassembled beds because I loved her and thought we had a beautiful future together.

We shared media together getting to know one another. We watched things of mutual interest, mostly her favorites she turned me on to.

50 cent “Candy Shop,” Kanye West “Flashing Lights,” and others, which almost invariably involved hot cars and hot women.

Now, I have always thought those kind of videos were crass, materialist, and appealed to our basest, most trivial instincts. Actually, when I was 15, I was already reading the Beats, deep into a lifetime study of Zen Buddhism, and listening to arty, esoteric music. Even then I was an urbane, sophisticated, and sensitive artist-intellectual.

But watching this stuff with her, I wanted more and more. The hot cars in the music videos got me on a car kick. I started you-tubing every high end sports car I could think of, preferably going as fast as possible. I started watching a lot of off-roading. Rally races, Paris-to-Dakar, Baja 500, stuff like that.

Low brow comedy became another staple. And of course porn, incessant porn.

One day I said “you got me acting like a 15 year old. Just checking out hot cars, hot chicks, and retarded comedy.” She laughed and smiled approvingly. But the deeper I got into it, the less she approved of it. After a week or two, if I had watched more than half an hour of cars, she might say “ that’s boy stuff” dismissively.

Same with the dumb humor. “Boy stuff,” although she never lost her insatiable appetite for Beavis and Butthead.

WTF!? Did she want me to cultivate archtypical male appetites or not?

One time, her daughter's best little girlfriend, a Filipina girl of 8 or 9 came over, and asked T.R. about me: “Is he a teenager or a man?”

T.R. laughed. “A little bit of both, I think.”

Then domesticity starting to taking its toll. I tried to kick Xanax, thinking a four year dependency might be the biggest part about why I couldn’t bust a nut in her guts. It led to an insomniatic withdrawal nightmare week.

Date: September 14, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Pls let me know how u r doing, Baby S
To: Stonefruit

Better, thank you. That late night walk was a life saver. You are a treasure. I finally slept a few hours too. If it isn't convenient for your daughter to stay with your husband tonight, please feel free to bring her home.

(Then I had a heavy flu/cold thing for two weeks. Then I had a week of debilitating headaches. I never get any of this crap! I usually only get sick every couple of years.

I finally started to recover. I went to campus on my bike daily to establish a structure and encourage progress on my dissertation writing. I finally had a good schedule going. I was feeling better and getting traction on my thesis. Everything seemed to be getting back on track.

Then a moped rammed me from behind at 35 mph while I rode my bicycle home from campus. It destroyed my bike, a real Maserati, a carbon fiber Trek road racer.

For a month, this woman who said she wanted a macho authoritarian dude saw me instead enfeebled, my virility at low ebb.

Domesticity continued to aggravate our love. I sensed a distance growing between us. We talked about it. We agreed we didn’t want to break up.

One time, she said "you don't even like my husband. He's the father of my daughter. You don't even like my daughter."

WTF?

"No. I don't like your husband." She knew that. Seems like sometimes she didn't even like him. Or maybe, liked him as the father of her child, but didn't respect him. "I think he's a tool."

In a publicity photo for a book he wrote as a young man, he looked like a surly Gene Vincent. A rebel. Then he got an Ivy League degree, pulled a 180, and became an imperialist running dog of the national (in)security establishment.

A Yale PhD in international relations and yet he knows absolutely nothing about international relations beyond the superficial consensus reality, which is completely full of shit. Which he doesn't see. Also a bit of a dweeb. And his art sucks. So fuck him. "Your daughter is a handful but I assume there will come a moment when I fall in love with her and then I'll be able to tolerate anything from her."

So where was this animosity coming from? It seemed more than a bit schizo. Maybe she was schizo, not bi-polar. Some of her medicines were prescribed for both.

I went to Texas to visit my dad and family I hadn’t seen in four years and to make plans to develop land we had just bought on Big Island, so I could move my girlfriend and stepdaughter there too. T.R. seemed down. We were going to homestead and live off the grid. I thought she was into it. I guess I was wrong.

Before I left, we had a little fight about cleaning. She had been doing her new job for about a month and every other day we had the kid and she had to take her to school, so she was usually up around 6:30 am and out the door at 7:30 am. Invariably, her daughter had been up since 6:00 am and was talking to one of her grandmothers on her cell phone about fairy land and all other kinds of imaginary realms, invariably ruled by discipline, procedure, authority, law, and order. Not necessarily justice. Very Saturnine for a a little child. It woke me up every time, drilling through the closed door of her room and the foam plugs in my ear.

T.R.'s lack of help cleaning was starting to piss me off. I was about ready to dress her down for it. One night she brought home this small stuffed monkey with huge plastic eyes that was waving hello. She clearly adored it and saw it as a token of our love, since one of my pet names for her was monkey. I laced into her about the cleaning.

I said "When I stay home to write my dissertation, I spend at least two hours cleaning up after you guys. You leave food everywhere, crap everywhere, the lights on, the doors open. At least just put your dishes in the sink. At least just give me a thank you now and then."

She got defensive. "Well, there are lots of jobs we have to split."

"What are you talking about?"

"Like driving. I drive to work every day."

"You drive to work every day? Of course you drive to work every day. I pedal or take the bus to campus everyday. Aren't we both in charge of our own transportation? What the hell are you talking about?"

“And another thing,” I was on an authoritarian roll (role?) “This monkey stays in the closet. I can’t stand cutesy wootsy shit and these eyes are disturbing."

She started crying silently. Oh shit. I have gone too far. I might have broken something. Oh fuck. I screwed the pooch. I overplayed the macho role I thought she wanted but I was still learning how to inhabit. I “displayed fear,” (always a no-no for those drawn to alpha males). I shit all over her trite, commercialized, but obviously heart-felt token of our relationship.

As I look back on it, this was about the time her mood started to shift. Giving the monkey a place of esteem on the bookshelf in our living room or its own little nook by a window didn’t help. She began to grow distant.

At the airport as I left to visit my family in Texas she said “promise me you will stay faithful and monogamous.”

"Of course, cakes of my baby.")

Date: October 8, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Hi sweetie!
To: T.R. Ponchik

Hey babe!

Made it to Austin safe and sound. Boy my train from Dallas to Austin took forever. It is great to see my family again, especially my brother. We all met at the bar he works at. A very cool place. In fact, Austin itself is as cool as I remember. Sure has had a lot of building development in the four years since I was here last though.

Let's get on Skype. My name is stonefruit_X

I hope we can IM chat and videophone a lot while I am here. Still planning on 2-3 weeks like I said.

I had another nightmare last night - ugh.

Miss you, love you. Hope everything is going well.

Your hot bf,

Stonefruit

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 8, 2010 1:08 am

Howdy. Awake? Feel like chatting? : )

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 9, 2010 1:19 am

Let me know if you wanna chat

(I checked out her Facebook wall. She posted "Boyfriend in Texas. Landladyfriend in North Carolina. Boss in Egypt. I could go on." Guess she felt abandoned. It had only been a few days. Then she posted: "It's easy to break up by text. Just type 'It ova.' That's local for "We should break up. Fare thee well."

Major league WTF!

First, big foul for lame use of pidgin, our local dialect of English here in Hawaii, by a malahini. Second, how could she even think about doing something so entirely craven as breaking up by text?)

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 10, 2010 4:36 pm

Love u

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 12, 2010 4:55 am

V unhappy. Not optimally functioning alone and with this communication. Better break up? Sorry. Let’s stay friends please.

(WTF! I tried to contact her and couldn’t get through. I tried texting, telephone, email, video phone. Nothing worked.)

Date: October 14, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: wtf?
To: T.R. Ponchik

was that break up text?!

(Was she fucking kidding me?! I couldn't believe it.)

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 14, 2010

Will look up my Skype info. Husband has houseguests so daughter staying w/me. When would you like 2 Skype? Any return plans?

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 15, 2010

Skype name is TR.Ponchik. I’m home if you’d like 2 speak.

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: October 16, 2010

What is going on?!

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 16, 2010

Daughter’s bday party now, not a good time 2 talk. How about 2nite. I’ve been busy and exhausted. What time is good?

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: October 17, 2010

I love you, Ponchik.

Date: October 18, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject:
To: Stonefruit

Stonefruit, I am sorry you feel upset. You knew I was unhappy. I loved you, then I became unhappy because of our differences, and I stayed unhappy. You are an awesome, brilliant, enlightened, unique man, but we are different. Your leaving and our lack of communication after you left was only one factor in my unhappiness.

Please be kind to let me know your return plans because I would strongly prefer not to have any surprise confrontation. I can pick you up from the airport and otherwise I sincerely hope our friendship survives. In any case, I would really appreciate knowing the date and time of your return when you know.

Date: October 18, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject:
To: T.R. Ponchik

Just out of curiosity and because I am always looking for ways to improve myself, what were our differences and how did I make you feel unhappy?

I heard you say “you're the man of my dreams,” “you are so good for me,” “you're so good for my twat,” “you are a masterful lover,” and variations on these themes so many times that I actually believed them. You know what? I thought the feeling between us was always mutual and profound. Great sex, easy warmth, a deep and abiding bond. Then this. It seems so out of left field. That is what I can't get my head around. If there is any hope of salvaging a friendship, I am going to need to know what went wrong in more detail.

"Me leaving and my lack of communication was only one factor" in your unhappiness. What were the others? Why didn't you share them with me before running off AWOL? I know you were frustrated that you felt I was neglecting you by working on my dissertation some evenings and weekends. I was frustrated with your hypersomia and many other things, but I took the bad with the good, which I thought is what people do with relationships. At least, that was the main thing frustrating you which you articulated. The dissertation was going to be over in a few months. Then I would have my life back and could give you a whole lot more attention. Which I was looking forward to a lot.

I wasn't at all sure I was going to move to the Big Island immediately upon my return to Hawaii - because then you wouldn't be with me right away. I wanted to go ahead of you and daughter by a few months if I had to, to build a place. But to wait until May after daughter’s school year ended for you guys to come over - that really felt like too long for me to wait. I mean the point of being together is to be together, right? I was torn. I do think the shit is about to hit the fan sooner rather than later in the outside world, and I wanted my family (you, daughter, and I - and my Texas folks) to be prepared for it, but then again, I passionately wanted to be with you on a daily basis. So I hadn't made any decisions about what I was going to do upon my return in 2-3 weeks at all.

Believe me, if I was going to fuck off, I would've put all my shit in storage before I left. I thought about that but didn't do it. To my mind, a major vote of confidence our relationship. Which I guess was not interpreted by you that way at all.

For a few days after I arrived, no, I didn't want to talk to you. I admit I did need a few days to myself, partially to process how suddenly and deeply we had (I thought) fallen in love. Then I spent a long time alone with my brother, who I haven't seen in four years and is one of the main reasons I came up here. I didn't even bring my phone or laptop when I went to go cruise with him. Then I wanted you to get on Skype, cuz I didn't know what my phone payment plan was. I'm on Stepdad’s family plan. I don't know if there would be some massive roaming charge or what. So I tried to get you on Skype, because I really wanted to communicate with you, preferably for free and not $100s in roaming fees.

And the time zones suck too. I know weekday mornings you are always rushing to get out the door so that leaves weeknights. With a 5 hour difference, when you usually come home around 630pm, it is already 11:30pm my time. I am usually asleep or winding down fast by then. By my second weekend away, I was trying hard to reach you, to no avail.

Also, besides wanting to see my family that I haven't seen in many years and to make concrete plans for the Big Island/survival of soon-to-come significant economic-geopolitical strife, reasonable goals, I think, I know you know what I was going through in the weeks right before I left. For goodness sakes, I was having repeated nightmares about sleeping and waking in our very own house! Wouldn't you like a change of scene in such a case?

If you honestly hope to salvage a friendship out of this, then you will call me tonight and help me make sense of what happened.

(I was finally able to get in contact with her through Skype IM. No, she doesn’t want to do a video call. I try to pin her down.

What the fuck is going on? What is it about me you don’t like?

Maybe there is room for movement. She wouldn’t explain. Finally, the most I could coax out of her was “you don't like my being on my phone, you don't like Facebook, you don't like rats, you don't like to know anything about my job.”

Phone, Facebook, rats, and her job?! Are you fucking kidding me?!

Yes, she was always on her phone, which I saw as debilitating her life skills (could she even read a map if she could no longer use the mapping function?), a tool of social atomization from the reality of her surroundings, not a means of true communication. But fine, she's Gen Y, I'm Gen X. If that is her bag so be it. Except for some occasional grousing, who cares?

Same with Facebook. A Facebook friend is not a real friend in flesh and blood. More social atomization. She had deleted the "My boyfriend is gone" and the "it ova" posts on her wall. Well, I guess between a break up text and being deleted from a Facebook wall, I am officially persona non grata to a Gen Y-er.

I wasn’t Gen-Y techie enough for her, even though I have made three websites, I blog, I am a digital videographer, I had online videos up before practically anybody, etc etc etc, blah blah blah.

Oh well. And then the rats. Oh, the rats.

She asked me early on if she and the girl could have rats. They loved rats and had had them before as pets. OK, you can have one rat. They came home with two. "It's ok," she said. "They are both sisters." Fuck. Whatever.

Their cage is initially inside our apartment. They are throwing food and shit onto the carpet all around their cage. I put a towel down beneath their cage. Even that is not enough to capture all of the shit they are flinging everywhere. I move them outside near our kitchen window. They start to get too stinky. You can smell it from inside. I move them to the backyard.

A few weeks later the girl goes "this one has a bump on its tail." Ah fuck. They are brother-sister.

Still later, the girl and her main playmate on the street forget to close the cage tightly after they are done playing with them and they escape. Wonderful. A pair of breeding rats on the loose.

About a week later, the girl finds them hiding in some cracks in a rock wall in the backyard. I'm relieved they are found and not on the loose, but pissed they are back in my life.

One day T.R. says "Now don't get mad." Ah fuck. That is never a good phrase to hear. It usually means "Get ready to suppress your totally natural reaction to be furious." "Now don't get mad, but the rats just had children."

Wonderful. I approved one rat and now I'm stuck with a family of inbred rats.

"You can keep the adult male and take the rest to the humane society."

"That's one option," she said. One option?! What happened to her love of an authoritarian man? I was starting to get pissed.

I don't like knowing anything about her job? No, I didn't. She has a Yale J.D. but instead of being a lawyer and making $200,000 a year, she is a secretary making $40,000 a year. For a tax attorney. Is it possible to imagine a more dry and excruciatingly tedious legal practice? I asked her about her job now and then to be polite though, because I am a nice guy.

"I love it! I get to exercise my creativity! One time, I made this report, and I made some of the papers green and some of them blue."

This from a painter I immediately compared to Chagall in my mind the first time I saw her work?!

Or: "how was that lunch? Weren't all the secretaries going to take you out to lunch for a hello thing?"

"It was great. I had ginger chicken. They were all so nice to me."

Shit, howdy, and goddamn. Sounded pretty boring to me from top to bottom.)

Date: October 18, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re:
To: Stonefruit

Skype was not working for me.

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 18, 2010 7:07 pm

I sent you an email. Please find the kindness, compassion and understanding in your heart not to be angry with me for feeling we are too different to make each other happy.

Date: October 19, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re:
To: T.R. Ponchik

Well, clearly we are not meant to be.

Quelle domage. I wanted to help you and support you and be your strong shoulder to lean on so you could have at least a fighting chance at living a rich, rewarding, and fulfilling life.

Good luck being insane and yet still somehow also unmedicatable, having a kid that will eliminate your freedom of action for the next 15 years, being trapped in a sexless marriage, financially bankrupt, and unable to work in your professional field.

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: October 19, 2010

I apologize 4 that hateful email. It was written in rage, confusion and heartbreak. I 2 aspire 2 civil relations. May all the good things in life come 2 u.

(I returned home to Hawaii from Texas and moved all of my stuff upstairs while she was still at work in one afternoon.)

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: October 23, 2010

Hope u r well, erstwhile gf, new friend. I will always cherish our brief time together. All the best 2 u in yr next phase of life. Be at peace.

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: Saturday, October 23, 2010 5:03 pm

Hi Stonefruit, saw you called. Thanks for your last 2 texts. I appreciate our relationship as well, wishing you the best. Pls let me know what u wanted to talk about.

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: Saturday, October 23, 2010 5:11 pm

I want 2 talk about us, for closure, clarity and self-improvement.

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: Saturday, October 23, 2010 6:16 pm

Please feel free to email me.

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: Saturday, October 23, 2010 5:11 pm

Well, u didn’t respond to my last email, so no point 2 that. Face2face would have showed proper respect 2 what we had but I guess this is our postmodern goodbye.

(As we were breaking up. It was next to impossible to get any type of communication out of her, most of all voice. Definitely not face-to-face, phone once or twice. During a call she said something something something “my therapist said” something something something. I immediately forgot the words surrounding “my therapist” because they were so patently retarded I knew instantly and intuitively they would be a waste of brain space to remember but I also knew just as intuitively she had talked about us in therapy and her therapist validated her decision to dump me and she was grateful for his professional stamp of approval of her impulses and eager to use the credentialing support in her mind.

Who was this quack, to be so firmly convinced she is acting in her best interest breaking up with me? To arrive at such a conclusion, there is no way he could possibly know the entire story. I googled him. He got his medical degree in the Dominican Republic. Great. Probably not the best and brightest psychiatrist in the world.

One night I'm upstairs and I see her arrive at 12:45 am with a dude carrying a guitar in a soft case slung over his shoulder like a haole Kikaida. Uh oh. Chicks can't resist musicians and men can't resist her. I hear one quick shower, one quick tooth brushing, and nothing else. No wine cork popping, no talking, no laughter, no music. Then I heard kissing and make out noises. Maybe sex, who knows?

This is barely a week after the breakup text.

She brings this douchebag to the home I grew up in in, to the house we had such a great summer in?!

Are you fucking kidding me?!

This chick sure doesn't wait long. I walked outdoors to listen to them outside of their window. Yup. They were making out or fucking or something. And in the little girl's room, not even the master bedroom. Should I storm in on them or leave them be? We are kind of broken up, aren't we? But in the house I grew up in? During a month I had still paid rent on? She didn't have the common courtesy to at least go fuck him at his house?

Ah fuck it. I go invade. I still have the key.

Every door was bobby trapped with pieces of a drum kit she had never assembled since she moved in. In opening the front door, I send a cymbal clattering across the room. She stormed out of the bedroom, thankfully wearing a negligee and not completely naked. Although who knows. Maybe it was already up around her neck as she bobbed up and down on his cock. “We’re broken up blah blah blah” she said. I dashed past her and flipped on the lights of the 6 year old girl’s bedroom of their conjugal bliss.

Some shirtless dorky half-bald 30ish guy looked sheepish and confused under the sheets.

I went down to greet them on the street, where they would have to pass on their way to her car. She jumped back when she saw me leaning on the garbage can. “I can’t believe you,” she spits. You can’t believe me?! Oh really? The dork walks by. “So,” I ask him “what band are you in?”

“I’m not in a band.”

“Oh. OK.”

They drove off. She must have gone to an open mike and said to herself: “I am so gonna fuck someone tonight.”

Before she brought that poor slob over, I had put the monkey on a chest of drawers in a place you would see immediately upon entering the front door and put a black cap on it, one I had bought on our Pacific Northwest honeymoon trip. After I had smoothed over that one enraged email I sent, it seemed like we were about to part amicably, with some degree of mutual gratitude for what we had experienced, so I thought placing the monkey there like that would be seen as a whimsical gesture of reconciliation as we parted ways. Sunday morning after she drove off with her fuck buddy or whatever he was, I went down to there again during daylight. I found the monkey and cap thrown behind the piano.

Fuck you too, cunt.

I twisted its head off then and there and threw the two pieces in the kitchen garbage can. Let her see what she has done to our love and any modicum of respect I might have retained for her, that stupid psycho slut bitch.)

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: Monday, October 25, 2010 1:28 pm

I did not want to hurt you at any point. I am sorry about the weekend incident. I am sorry I caused you pain and I hope you and I both find happiness. I plan to sign a lease today. Because my daughter and I need to pack, pls let me know your plans with regard to where we used to live together so I can plan accordingly. I hope some time we can restore friendly communication if not friendship and I continue to wish you the best.

(I tried to leave it on a happy note.)

Date: October 26, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re:
To: T.R. Ponchik

I won't be living down there and Landlady is eager to rent it out as soon as possible, so feel free to move out as soon as possible. If I happen to be at the house upstairs when you come by, don't worry, I won't bother you at all.

You were definitely sweet, sexy and fun, Ms. Black Belted!

You are one of the most exciting and gorgeous women it has ever been my pleasure to meet, let alone be with. I wish we could have hashed our differences out instead of ending it so abruptly but such is life I guess. I hope your new guy friend can give you what you thought was lacking with me.

Love,

Stonefruit

Date: October 26, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: downstairs
To: Stonefruit

Stonefruit,

Thank you for this note.

Thank you for the kind words.

I texted Landlady: tonight I will work on making the place presentable for showings, most likely moving out fully on Sunday.

I profoundly appreciate our relationship, past, present and future.

Hoping our communication remains open and we remain assets in each other's lives.

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Burning the purple kine bud under a bridge…

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010

How is everything, Stonefruit?

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010

I’ve certainly been better

(She moved out slowly in phases over about a week, leaving the place in shambles and leaving tons of crappy furniture behind.

One time when she was downstairs with her Craig's List movers or where ever she found them, I saw one of them in the street below with a fishing spear that looked just like one of mine that I had in the back of the house. I don't know these people from Adam. I went to go challenge him and take it from him. "I wasn't going to take it," he whimpered. Whatever. Another mover claimed it was his.

Without bothering to check if my two were still in the back, I said "This looks like one of the two I got in back."

"It was from my truck."

From his truck? Who takes spears along on a moving job? "I don't know you guys. I don't know if you are walking off with my shit. Spears are cheap. Take it."

"You better find out whose something is before you take it."

"Whatever."

The spear carrying idiot said "Quit looking looking out of the windows, you prick!"

Prick?! You insult me on my land, in my family home?! I got half a mind to pound you out and I haven't even been in a real fight since fourth grade.

But I let it pass.

And she left her rats there. Since that was one of the main reasons she said we had to break up, I figured they would be among the first things she would take to her new place. Nope. Instead, they were the very last. One time when her Craig's List movers were doing their thing and I was upstairs, I watched her fat 40ish female mover clean their cage. The little girl watched for a minute and then wandered off. The fat lady closed the cage. "I sure hope she closed it up tight," I thought but didn't double check on it because I wanted to give T.R. and her crew their space.

The next morning I'm drinking my coffee in the backyard, taking the air. Ah fuck my ass! The rat cage door is open down on the ground and there are rats everywhere! I grabbed the nearest bucket I could find and started chucking them all into it. I think I got them all except for one of the adult fuckers back in the crack of the wall they escaped to last time. Probably the goddamn mother and probably already pregnant again, fucked by her brother or son.

An old lady who lives next door, the matriarch of a three generation Chinese family living there called me by my name. "Your mom is trying to get in touch with you." She was still on the mainland dealing with her family's estate. "Those rats have been there all morning."

I told her "I think I got all of them but one." These rats have been nothing but a pain the ass the entire time we had them.

I called my mom and told her the rats got loose again and I think I got them all but one. My mom texted T.R. to the effect of "Your rats are loose. What are you gonna do about it?"

My mom told me T.R. texted back saying "I'll send somebody over to catch them."

I arrived on the scene in the afternoon again. There were cheetos all over the place around the cage. One baby rat was near the cage, still loose. I scooped it up and chucked it in the cage.

One of the adults was still missing. She didn't fully recapture all of the rats that had escaped, on top of the job I already did for her in that regard. Since she had already left them unfed and unwatered for a week, and she or her minions had failed to recapture at least two (and God knows how many others still lurking around), there was no telling if or when she would be back to get them at all.

I made a judgement call. This was a public health hazard. A potentially pregnant rat and an unknown amount of inbred baby rats at large. A pet owner who is clearly not responsible. A neighbor was already peeved.

So I sealed off all of the cracks in the wall with concrete.

By this time we are already well into November, which she hadn't paid for. Instead of arranging to have her remaining shitty furniture taken away, she sent a Salvation Army truck to pick it up. Not surprisingly, she wasn't there to oversee their arrival. I left the door open downstairs and ignored them. They passed on all of it. It was all decrepit crap, like you might find on the street. In fact, that was probably where she found it.

When the Salvation Army truck left. I went downstairs to assess the situation. I saw a preprinted tag on the door handle. A box was checked off which read "We are unable to process these items due to (X) Furniture with stains and (X) Requiring repairs." They had passed on all of it.

There were about seven or eight large pieces of furniture. Tables, chairs, a huge bookcase, a huge long chest of drawers, a bed, mattresses. Her Russian "maid," another killer find from Craig's List I am sure, had been lurking about downstairs the previous night. Of course, again, T.R. wasn't there to supervise.

Judging by what I saw downstairs the next day after Salvation Army left, I am not clear what if anything she had done down there. There was a pile of cloths and shoes on the mattresses. There was rotting food in the refrigerator. Tons of kitchen crap in the kitchen closets. The carpet hadn't been vacummed. Her trademark glitter was everywhere. There were two things still hanging in the closet of her daughter's old room in dry cleaning bags. One was a nice raincoat. One was a simple and very lovely baby blue dress. I had an intuition it held great sentimental value for her. Why hadn't she taken it with her first thing then? Whey were her fucking rats still here if she loved them so much and we had broken up over them?

She hadn't moved out on time. She hadn't overseen the last couple visits of her maid or movers. She hadn't overseen the arrival of Salvation Army (even though they left another tag on the door saying "Donor will be home"). She had left the place in shambles.

I was starting to get pissed. If she was willing to donate everything remaining in the unit to Salvation Army and they passed, well fuck it. That was that.

I started throwing it all off the lanai where we had grilled so often and fucked once or twice down onto the street below, chucking it in such a way as to maximize it exploding on impact. Within 45 minutes, I had created a huge pile of debris. Once everything was out of the unit, I went down to the street and smashed everything to splinters and tied and bundled it into neat little packages for the monthly "bulky pick up" garbage men to carry away.

This should have been her job but I was glad to be rid of her.

Her husband finally came that night to grab her rats. Not her. Her husband. He also took one of the five or six garbage bags I had made. Probably the one with the little blue dress. He tried to get my attention at the locked door, but I ignored him.

Another reason we needed to break up, one she had mentioned a few times, was because "I didn't like her music." True, she only had about 30 artists she liked and listened to a lot, while I had 200 gigabytes of mp3s on an exernal hard drive and 12,000 songs on my iPod, from all eras, places, and genres. Way vaster than her musical horizons to say the least. But of her 30, I dug 20. She turned me onto a lot of pop music I hadn't been exposed to before which I would up digging. And a couple of cool Russian bands. And we both came into the relationship loving Kanye.

One time she looked at my iPod. I told her to just pick something. “I don’t know any of these people.” Hundreds of artists. She was flustered. "There’s too many! You give me more to love about you every day,” she said.

When you are falling in love, sometimes it seems like every corny ass love song was written just for you. In my case it was Justin Timberlake's song "My Love." Along with about five or six other tunes, it became a major theme song for our honeymoon phase.

"If I wrote you a symphony just to say how much you mean to me.
What would you do?
If I told you you were beautiful, would you date me on the regular?
Tell me would you?
Well baby I been around the world, but I ain't seein' myself with another girl.
Like you.
I can see us holding hands walking on the beach, our toes in the sand. I can see us on the countryside, sitting on the grass lying side by side.
You can be my baby, making my babies, girl you amaze me.
We gotta do nothing crazy.
See, all I want is for you to do is be my baby."

"What's the point in waiting anymore, cuz girl I never been more sure.
That baby, it's you."

As all honeymoon phases have their theme songs, so too do the breakups. I went on a massive Bob Dylan kick. I found an old demo of his I had never heard before, "Long Time Gone."

"You might see me on your crossroads when I'm passing through.
Remember me how you wish too as I'm drifting from your view.
I ain't got the time to think about it, I got too much to get done
because I been a long time comin' and I'll be a long time gone."

We haven't spoken since that last text and I doubt we ever will again.

It is hard to suss out just what the fuck happened. Best I can figure, I caught the benefit of a three month manic cycle with this hot bi-polar psycho slut and the tragedy of the beginning of a depressive cycle.

"Fare thee well," like she said on her Facebook wall? Bob Dylan has a killer break up song where he goes "Goodbye is too good a word, babe, so I'll just say fare thee well." It worked for me breaking up with my Texas girlfriend a decade ago but not for this one.

I hate to contradict the Bob, but in this case "fare thee well" is too good a word so I'll just say - nothing, except for that last poem and this short story.

I've done a whole heap of traveling over the years. I've been all over the world several times. I've hitchhiked back and forth and up and down all across North America more times than I can even remember. I know what a crossroads is. I seem to have lived there my whole life, literally and metaphorically. I have been there a million times.

I know the way the wind blows a rusty metal sign back and forth slowly on its creaky post.

The old small town crossroads. No people, no traffic no more. Everything has moved out onto the interstates and the Walmarts at the edge of town.

An old school crossroads is even lonelier now than they used to be back in the day. You half expect a tumble weed to blow by, even if you aren't in West Texas or New Mexico.

Lonesome. Lonesome traveller. Lonesome traveller traveling.

That has been much of my life until now. That seems to have been my way, my path, my gift, my curse, my blessing, my aptitude.

I thought this girl would help take me out of all that. I thought this girl and I could build a future together. I thought we might make a self-sufficient little homestead together, one ruled by a few simple ideas: "maintain aesthetics, allure, discipline, fabulous posture, and practicality at all times."

Fuckin' A! Can't go wrong with those!

I saw an adorable cottage being built by our own hands. I saw a beautiful garden being tilled. I saw little bambinos running around in the tall grass. I saw contentment. I saw an idyll.

I thought that was what we had coming up. I was relieved. I was excited. I had finally found the right girl to take to the land. We were going to build a life together. We were gonna make it.

I was madly in love.

But she was clearly troubled, wildly troubled. She was, as the Hopi say, "koyaanisqatsi": out of balance. Just like the technological world she was so obsessively connected into.

I thought I could help her and make her mine for the rest of my life. I ain't no patron saint of troubled chicks or lost causes but I wanted to be her lover, her protector, and even her nurse. Most of all, I wanted to be her best friend and she mine. Forever. Maybe nature, village life, hard physical labor, and gradual detachment from electronics would help cure her of her mental ailments as well.

Maybe. I guess not, as it would seem.

We only go around once on this crazy blue marble of ours. We might as well find a good mate and stand by them shoulder-to-shoulder through thick and thin. Especially with the shit storm headed our way.

Especially now that my family has land. Not only land, but land in a community with people who care about us. Even though Hillary Clinton has turned into Lady Macbeth, she had it just right when she said "it takes a village."

A man alone doesn't stand a chance. A family alone has a tough row to hoe. A village? With the right people, the right skills, and the right natural environment, they have got a fighting chance. Maybe even more than that. They are probably gonna make it just fine.

That's what I thought we had. That's what I thought we were both moving towards together. I was wrong.

As I began to inhabit my new role as an alpha male after a lifetime of feminism, did I veer off into domineering asshole territory? I am sure I did. After spending money like it grew on trees during our honeymoon phase, did I become a whiney bitch about how I had been living off my savings all year? No doubt. Did she ever come to me with any of these concerns before she wandered off AWOL?

No fucking way.

Did she clutch? Did she "mean what she said?" Was she "leading me on?" Did she "mean it when she said it and therefore she wasn't lying?"

Did she even know what the fuck she was doing?

I don't know. Does it really matter? These things happen. When we had that calm conversation about potentially breaking up right before I left, I was completely ready to pull the trigger. But coming from out of left field like that a couple of weeks later was a real kick in the stomach.

If she had come to me with her issues and tried to talk to me about them, if she had dumped me in person or at least by phone, if she hadn't have fucked someone within a week of dumping me, if she had ended the relationship with any modicum of class, I might have taken her back, even with all of her baggage. But she didn't, so I won't.

In the end, all we can do is pick up the pieces and move on.

She was a lot like my other sexually charismatic flings: CW the belly dancer, KG the painter, SC the carbon credit trading executive. They all wandered off after a short while too. Because they could. They were hot and accomplished.

She has about 5-10 more years of sexual charisma that will allow her to keep wandering off at the first sign of boredom or frustration. After that, she will have to start working shit out with whoever she is with. Which she doesn't have the inner resources to do. Honestly, if she makes it to 40 years old without killing herself or becoming permanently incapacitated, I will be surprised. Maybe she can make it as a cranky fat lesbian.

I know it is corny to say you have "to love like you've never been hurt." But you do. Again and again. Everytime. Sometimes a tired wilted cliche is a tired wilted cliche because it is also a miniature poem of ancient wisdom.

I was sure I wanted to go all in. Not because I did not see the warning signs and the red flags. I surely did. But because I knew, good or bad, this would be one hell of a ride. I wanted to put as much on the table as I needed to see all of her cards. It wound up being a lot. She didn’t lay down the hand I might have hoped to see. I lost. But she did not win either.

It has been a strange year.

Black Friday stampede compilation video

2010-12-06T13:30:00.000-08:00

I'd call the Kwazians baboons, but that would be an insult to baboons. They are far more civilized.

And for what? For what this shrieking hysteria? For what crushing their fellow human beans underfoot?

For the shiny meaningless baubles of a consumerist nightmare gone haywire, which they can't even afford anyway.

It's sad, really. When Lincoln called the Kwa "the last best hope of mankind," he was a politician talking out of his ass. But it wasn't impossible, given some radical changes.

Well, that window of opportunity has long since closed.

The Kwa deserves every last spoonful of the gorgeous can of whoop ass the cosmos is about to unleash upon it.

Burning Spear - Calling Rastafari

2010-12-04T23:21:00.000-08:00

Damian Marley - Welcome to Jamrock

2010-12-02T23:30:00.000-08:00

Mos Def - Close Edge

2010-11-28T13:17:00.000-08:00

The dollar is going tits up

2010-11-25T13:11:00.000-08:00

China and Russia just agreed to conduct their bilateral trade in their own currencies.

I reckon the first convulsive impact will come in early January 2011. I bet it will come in the form of the BRIC countries and a few other up-and-comers all switching to a new international currency of reserve developed by the Chinese and Russians, backed by a basket of commodities.

Stick a fork in the U.S. dollar, it's done.

Your ZOGbux will be lining bird cages within a year.

Tragedy at Koh Pich

2010-11-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

A vision of hell

It took me a week, but I finally got my computer up and running again.

Boy, what a symbolic and gratifying victory over the cause of my laptop's near-death experience, not to mention a practical resolution.

As my ex-girlfriend and I used to tell each other in happier days: "maintain aesthetics, allure, discipline, fabulous posture, and practicality at all times."

Indeed.

But in other far more somber news, I have yet another candidate for one of the many weird events that have begun to stack up.

No, not the plane I recently flew on that damn near fell out the sky in the most terrifying flight I have ever taken in my life.

I am referring to a recent incident in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Piecing together various media reports from the Strait Times, Phnom Penh Post, AP, and elsewhere and knowing a little something about Cambodia based on living there twice, here is what appears to have happened.

Koh Pich is a sandbar at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong River. Efforts to expand the "island" and turn it into a major luxury condominium and office area epitomize the insider dealings of a very corrupt country.

Well, Cambodia just had their big Water Festival, one of the happiest events of the year. I think it celebrates the time of year the Tonle Sap stops flowing inland and starts flowing back out to the sea. There are long canoe paddling races, food stands, free concerts, fireworks, and hundreds of thousands of people having a good time in central Phnom Penh. Everybody also has free rein to spill water on anybody else. It is quite festive.

Koh Pich appears to be far along in its development. I bet many of the revelers wanted to go check it out, in part because this was probably the only time in their lives they would ever be allowed into such an rich gated compound. With an annual per capita income of about $300/year, you can't blame them for being curious about affluence. There were also more concerts, food stalls, and other entertainments distributed around the "island."

A huge crowd was on the extremely narrow, sub-code bridge, coming and going. Some people ether passed out from the crowded conditions or got electrocuted by the lights on a bridge and the water which was doubtless everywhere.

The mob panicked, stampeded, and a whopping 349 are confirmed dead at last reports.

Knowing Cambodia, I am sure the cops immediately closed both ends of the bridge as soon as they noticed the stampede, trapping the mob, freaking them out even more, beyond panic, and turning the bridge into a vision of hell on earth, with many of the living trapped in a writhing sea of the upright but already dead.

5'nizza - Тянуться

2010-11-11T19:16:00.000-08:00

The people are getting pissed

2010-11-11T11:50:00.000-08:00

Protestors and police clashing over a nuclear waste train in Germany

"German people in unprecedented rebellion against government. 1,000 injured in protests. Police at breaking point."

17,000 cops from Germany, France, Poland and Croatia were defeated.

"Trapped in black, icy woods without supplies or reinforcements able to reach them because of blockades by a mobile fleet of farmer’s tractors, the exhausted and hungry police officers requested negotiations with the protestors."

50,000 took to the streets in London to protest a proposed tripling of university fees. They wound up taking over the Conservative Party headquarters and trashing it.

Are these sporadic incidents or indications of the tipping point to come?

From the gentlest of breezes come the mightiest of storms...

Tillman the skateboarding dog!

2010-11-10T16:07:00.000-08:00

Just so you don't think I am all gloom and doom, I give you Tillman, the skateboarding dog!

He skates! He skimboards! He surfs!

And so it begins

2010-11-09T21:20:00.000-08:00

Last night I emailed a mutant brethren of mine about the weirdness to come. I also typed up a sketch of my summer fling which ended so very bizarrely, wondering if he thought such an odd relationship was related to the astrological T-square, but I forgot to attach it.

Then I blogged the previous entry with the line "disconnect from electronic devices" and posted it. Drafting a synopsis of this tragic relationship made me think about her, how it ended, and what we had lost. I got angry and pounded the table my laptop was on with my fist. Hard, but not super hard. My laptop died instantly.

Her final parting gift.

Disconnect from electronic devices indeed.

Syncronicity is real.

I have been trying to resuscitate it all day with no luck. Damn, I lost a couple of days of great work on my dissertation and a bunch of really great cover letters for my job hunt. But other than that, no big loss. Except for a functional laptop to continue writing my dissertation on.

Great. There's another $650 I may need to spend.

Then, today, I see news of a what looks exactly like an ICBM being launched, smack off of L.A., from under the ocean! The Pentagon says it wasn't theirs, wasn't foreign. They have no idea what it was.

Riiiiiiiiiiight.

And it's only got 700 views on You Tube! Go back to bed, Amerikkkka, your government is in control. Go back to Facebook. Go back to your telephones.

I call bullshit. The NSA has the signal intelligence capabilities to know exactly what this was, the platform it was fired from, and its country of origin. They just don't want to freak the people out by divulging that information.

Like that old Richard Pryor joke goes: "who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes!" My lying eyes saw an ICBM launched 35 miles off the coast of Los Angeles.

It had to be foreign. Chinese? Israeli? Russian?

A far as the weirdness goes, it's game on now, and will be for several weeks.

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

2010-11-08T21:45:00.000-08:00

Fun Boy Three, The lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum

Stay in touch with the people you love the most over the next few months, your inner circle, your family and friends, especially those who really understand what the fuck is going on with geopolitics, international macrostructural economics, quantum physics, the laws of karma, and general weirdness. Only they will know what is about to go on, how massive and relatively sudden it will be.

Otherwise, go refresh yourselves at beautiful natural places. Disconnect from electronic devices. Start preparing yourselves for simpler lifestyles, however you can.

Are aliens coming? This sounds silly to say, doesn't it? It's a "conspiracy theory" staple. But it sure has been in the news and entertainment a lot more than usual lately. Is this an Operation Mockingbird-type media control initiative for use as a social conditioning agent to ready us for fake aliens as some sort of ultimate false flag "terrorism" event?

If you knew anything about deep politics, you would know this is not a frivolous question. If you are among my dozens of readers, you know that already.

Could be false flag aliens. Could be real aliens. Could be inter-dimensional portals opening, inter-dimensional beings visiting us.

Check out what CERN is doing right now with their Large Hadron Collider. They are fucking with the elemental forces of nature. They might wind up being the source of our weird event.

There is a distinct note of positivity in this, however. We might finally figure out the obvious - how to survive on this planet. Radically and pretty quickly, we might be able to reorient 5,000 years of civilization.

Will this be in a distinctive event or an extremely compressed era of several years or decades? I don't know. But I do intuit that it will be weird, massive, and soon to arrive.

An astrologer friend of mind says the 18th because of planetary alignments. Halfpasthuman.org/urbansurvival.com say the 14th. I say soon, but not more than a few weeks away.

And it will be something big. A game changer.

The evil Federal Reserve meeting just happened on Jekyll Island this last November 5-6. The G20 meeting is coming up in a few days.

The G19 might finally just tell Amerikkka to go fuck off. The weird event could be the international economic convulsions reverberating out from that.

And you still can't take an aerial attack on Iran off the table. David Broder just wrote something in the Washington Post saying Obama could salvage his presidency and the greatness of his legacy by attacking Iran. These people are nuts! And they are the Wise Men in charge!

The lunatics have taken over the asylum.

The pressure is building quickly. It is already seemingly well past the breaking point.

As Bob Dylan said in his lyrics to It's All Over Now, Baby Blue: "You must leave now take what you need you think will last, but whatever you wish to keep you'd better grab it fast."

This is absolutely uncanny to me right now, the real voice of prophecy.

Go to your safe places, your good communities.

Start taking control of your own water, food, sewage, and power, locally and individually.

Get right with "god" however you conceive of it.

There is a shit storm of epic proportions coming our way.

Duck!

Two huge economic meetings within a week

2010-11-08T05:23:00.000-08:00

Big evil meeting of the cream of the crop of the Federal Reserve November 5-6, including all the regional elites, several past heads, and other elite banksters at Jekyll Island, the original scene of the crime where the idea for the Fed, a private bank, was hatched

"A Return to Jekyll Island: The Origins, History, and Future of the Federal Reserve"

Fuck the panels. Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall at the reception and over the scotch and sodas in their private meetings?

On top of that, the G20 is meeting on November 11-12 too. German has called American economic policy "clueless" and Brazil and China are telling Amerikkka to get bent too. Amerikkka is acting like it's got a straight flush when it's got no cards at all. The rest of the world is rapidly beginning to see through the bluff.

The G20 might gang up on Amerikkka at the summit meeting and its economy and the dollar might be toast, pronto, finally to sink beneath the waves.

"G20 Finds Common Ground Opposing U.S."

Good riddance to bad rubbish. But the Amerikkkans will have no one to blame but themselves.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson

By December, the global economy could be a very different place, with the 'Kwa ass out.

The RZA - Flying Birds (Long Version)

2010-10-31T13:56:00.000-07:00

Beatles - I've Got a Feeling

2010-10-31T12:21:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan - It's all over now baby blue

2010-10-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

Skip that douche Donovan and go straight to Dylan at 2:30.

BlackStar - What's beef

2010-10-30T00:36:00.000-07:00

Slam - Prison Verse

2010-10-29T17:56:00.001-07:00

Lightnin' Hopkins - Baby don't you tear my clothes

2010-10-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

Algorithms and Red Wine

2010-10-28T22:09:00.000-07:00

Is the 'digital hive' a soft totalitarian state?

By Joe Bageant
Ferrara, Italy

Sitting in a trendy wine bar, one of those that brings out food to match your particular choice of wine, mystified by the table setting. What was that tiny baby spoon for? Cappuccino surely, at some point, but why no big spoon to go with the knife and fork? The things a redneck American does not know grow exponentially in Bella Italia, starting with the restaurants -- not to mention several civilizations beneath one’s feet. Being in a house that has been continuously occupied for over 1000 years -- resisting the temptation to piss in the hotel room bidet, that sort of thing.

One thing the Italians can never be accused of is being a culture given to vinyl sided sameness, fast food franchises. Another thing is lack of a good educational system, given that Italy’s is among the very best in the world. So here I am sitting with some college kids trying to hang onto my end of a discussion of evolutionary consciousness, and whether Italy can withstand the cultural leveling of globalism.

“And Mr Bageent, what do you think of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the hive mind and the noosphere? Can monolithism and totalitarianism possibly be resisted in the cybernetic age?”

Huh?

“Il regno mondiale dei computer, global computerization. Do all those disassociated shards of human input constitute an overarching hive intelligence? Or are they the emergence of further evolutionary structures?”

“Ahem, uh, well, Timothy Leary once convinced me that they are,” I said. “But after the drugs wore off, I was not so certain. And now I’m certain again that he was right. But, with a far more chilling outcome than he or Chardin could have ever predicted.”

Which was pretty good for pulling it out of my ass.

In any case, it seems that 40 years in retrospect, the human hive enjoys monolithism and totalism far more than anyone would have ever guessed back in the sixties. Most of industrial humanity, as it turns out, is, or would be, quite happy to come home from a hard day in the mines and settle down to Facebook or Twitter or hive broadcast “news” and passive entertainments, distributed by unseen “corporate entities.” I dunno, I think I liked dope and live music and sex better. But as all three diminish in my life with age, I’ve learned to settle for the Larry King Show and/or a lot less at times.

Big Al and the Tuscaloosa sprinkler man

On the other hand, this whole business of the new hive cybernetic connectivity, could be just a swarm of data bits with no particular significance, in and of themselves, other than the magical thinking belief that they do. Which ain’t no small thing, given that what we agree upon as reality is achieved by social consensus. Hell, to some people Beelzebub still stalks the earth. To others, America is a free republic, not a company town. We all have our hallucinations.

One thing for sure. Most people in the (over)developed world think the connectivity and speed of the algorithms behind the cyberhive are worth it. Even teachers teach to a standardized test so students will conform to an algorithm, and if that ain’t hive mind, I don’t know what is.

Besides, if the worship of algorithms is not worth it, it does not matter. Whether we be Tanzanians à la Darwin’s Nightmare, or some Stanford professor writing economic algorithms, the people who control all our lives in the globalized economic world believe they are.

For example, bankers and investment houses believe intelligent algorithms (Big Al) can calculate human risk in making loans. That an algorithm can predict whether a 35-year old lawn sprinkler installer in Tuscaloosa will be able to steadily make $2,300 monthly payments on his $220,000 twice refinanced “snout-house” (so-named because of the four-car garage sticking out the front) for 30 years. Most of us would be more than happy to make that prediction for them, and with far greater accuracy, for a fraction of what they paid the pinhead to write the algorithm.

In the pre-digital hive era there were limits to what the organic human brain, and therefore the mind, plus past experience, could calculate, then evaluate. At some point, one was forced to recognized the limits of a financial proposition or investment. Famliarity with the actual basis of an investment was necessary. (Hmmm. Lawn sprinklers, huh? And yer paying on a new Dodge Ram too?”) But there was no stopping such things as computer-assisted hedge funds, and the techno nerds’ faith that you could remove the human risks through complex algorithmic structures. So mythical financial instruments such as derivatives and layers of bets on derivatives, and bets on those bets, bloomed out there in the “virtual economy,” sending out algorithmic spores that spawned even stranger financial flora. The whole of it could not be understood by any single human participant. Even the individual parts were understood only by their specific designers. As in, “Just trust me on this Marv. This instrument even creates its own collateral” (which many of them did). Information, of course, is not reality, not even close to the juicy anecdotal stuff of which our daily lives are made. In essence, investment is reduced to an algorithmic Google search for debt, which is wealth to a banker, then mathematically rationalizing that debt as wealth for the rest of us.

Life is lived anecdotally, not algorithmically. And anecdotal evidence is not allowed in the new digital corpocracy. As one poster on Democratic Underground put it, “Anecdotal now has this enforced meaning such that no one is supposed to believe what they experience, what they see, hear, taste, smell, etc. The Powers That Be have basically extinguished the notion of inductive reasoning. Everything has to be replicated in a laboratory and since 90% of all the labs in this nation are operated by Corporate Sponsored monies, not much truth comes out of them.”

The trouble with the algorithmic age is that life is not a finite sequence of steps that define and contain the algorithmic concepts used. Even when created with the best of intentions -- and we can all agree by now there were few good intentions at Goldman Sachs when they were creating and bundling these mutant investments -- they cannot account for our uninsured sprinkler installer getting cancer, or divorcing the other half of the household income -- or the end of America’s residential construction orgy.

The digital folly is never ending. The knock-on effect just keeps rolling. The latest is the rising scandal of millions of illegal foreclosures created by MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems), which enabled the big financial firms to securitize and swap mortgages at super high speed. But not to worry. Nancy Pelosi and Christopher Dodd are on the case, and there is sure to be a Congressional committee appointed. Whoopee! Have one on me.

Meanwhile, we have our social networking software to better weave us into the hive. Social networking software, now there’s a term that should scare the piss out of anyone with an IQ over 40. It means the database as hive reality. Facebook, online banking, shopping, porn, years of one’s life playing electronic games or whatever, online dating and reducing romance and companionship to fit the software. Or 4,000 Facebook “friends,” data on 4000 Americans voluntarily collected for Facebook corporation. The concept of “friends” is cheapened, rendered meaningless as it passes through a database. In fact, all human experience is cheapened by that process. Information is not reality.

Flatworm economics

As my second wife, who was a mathematician, can tell you, I know as much about algebra as a flatworm. So I turn to experts when I write this stuff -- or sometimes just make it up as I go. But even a dumb person can ask questions. And one of my questions as I sit here background Googling the subject is this: Does a search engine really know what I want, or am I dumbing down to fit its hive algorithms? If the latter is the case, then why don’t we just bring back PCP?

Anyway, allegedly, the hive does many things better than paid experts. Wikipedia is an example of this assertion. Most web content is generated by hive inhabitants for free, profiting the new elite cybernetic ownership class, which is to say some corporation or other. This also means that content becomes worthless. That the efforts of skilled and devoted journalists, artists and others become valueless, unsellable, just more info-shards in the hive. Only advertising has value in the cyberhive. In a nation whose social realism has been represented by advertising for three quarters of a century, that was to be expected.

Of course the real global economic problem is seven billion people in increasing competition for ever scarcer vital resources. But capitalism loves competition, as long as, A: it is the people’s capital involved, and B: it is not the capitalists doing the competing. Either way we’re talking money here and what most people consider to be “economics.” Economics equals money. Right?

But the actual world revolves around meeting our genuine needs, which may or may not involve money. In the big picture, money is just one small, much abused abstract tool. Money has been abused from the beginning, probably about fifteen minutes after the first shekel was minted, but now the abuse has reached such levels that the entire notion of money is collapsing in on itself. Our concept of money needs to be reevaluated and probably abandoned in the distant future.

The bottliberia waiter comes with something on a plate I can actually -- by pure luck -- identify. Octopus gnocchi. The conversation rolls on.

“What do you believe allowed such abuse and calamity?” I ask.

An intense young woman leans across the table, all black hair and red lips, making an old man moan and sigh inwardly.

“Fossil fuels, of course,” she says. “An unnatural supply of energy. But once that is gone, we're going to have to go back to a whole different way of doing everything. Everything.”

“Spot on,” I agree. At that moment she could have gotten me to agree that the earth is flat.

But the truth is that each gallon of fossil fuel contains the energy of 40 man-hours. And that has played hell with the ecology of human work, thanks mostly to the money economy. For instance, a simple loaf of bread, starting with the fossil fuels used to grow the wheat, transport, mill, bake, create the packaging materials and packaging, advertise and distribute it, uses the energy of two men working for two weeks. Yet this waste and vast inefficiency is invisible to us because we see it only in terms of money, jobs and commerce. Cheap oil allowed industrial humans to increasingly live on environmental credit for over a century. Now the bill is due and no amount of money can pay it. The calorie, pure heat expenditure as energy, is the only currency in which Mother Nature trades. Period.

Despite that America produced such thinkers on the subject of living simply as Thoreau, modern hydrocarbon based civilization has driven expectations of material goods and convenience, and the transactions surrounding those expectations, through the stratosphere. Money has abstracted the notion of work to the point where, I dare say, there are not 100,000 people in America who truly understand that, although there are at least a few million trying to understand and liberate themselves.

I’m gonna take a wild shot here and say that understanding and liberation, come through self-discipline and self-denial, and that it’s nearly impossible for Americans to practice self-discipline. They cannot imagine why self-discipline, and a more ascetic life, becoming less dependent on the faceless machinery of algorithm driven virtual money, is necessarily liberating.

If there can be a solution at this late stage, and most thinking people seriously doubt there can be a “solution” in the way we have always thought of solutions, it begins with powering down everything we consider to be the economy and our survival. That and population reduction, which nobody wants to discuss in actionable terms. Worse yet, there is no state sanctioned, organized entry level for people who want to power down from the horrific machinery of money. There are too many financial, military and corporate and governmental forces that don’t want to see us power down (because it would spell their death), but rather power up even more. That’s called “a recovery.”

When viewed from outside the virtual money economy, and from the standpoint of the planet’s caloric economy, probably half of American and European jobs are not only unnecessary, but also terribly destructive, either directly or indirectly. Yet what nation or economic state acknowledges the need for a transition away from jobs that aren't necessary. None, because such an economy could not support the war machines or the transactional financial industries that dominate our needs hierarchy for the benefit of the few. Loaning us money we have already earned, stuffing us with corn syrup. And I won’t even go into the strong possibility that everybody does not need to be employed at all times for the world to keep on turning.

Like the Reagan Years on speed

One of the Italian students, Mariarosa, asks, “Is it true that so many Amerians are struggling and suffering right now?”

“No,” I reply, “not in the real sense. If they are suffering, most of them are suffering from commodities withdrawal. What they really are is people oppressed by metastasized capitalism. Which is its own form of suffering, I guess. They are squeezed hard for profit every moment of their waking lives. They’ve got families and dare not make a move, even of they knew how.”

Everyone nods in agreement.

“It’s coming to Italy too,” says one young man. Again, all nod in agreement.

Yet, despite Berlusconi, despite the rigthtist takeover in progress in Italy -- which I am guessing will be successful, because I’ve seen it all before in America through globalization -- so many are still able to ask the right questions. They seem able to filter what they need and what is best for the majority, from what they want. But looking at the overall country is like watching the Reagan era unfold again before your very eyes. Only faster. All of these kids probably own an iPod or cell phone, the only difference being that they do not let them interrupt a good meal.

The third bottle of wine arrives and the topic turns to global competition, and the EU charges that “Italy is not competitive enough.” A student named Cristiano, sits directly across form me, sporting one of those fashionable three-day beards (I tried that once -- people just asked me: “How long have you been depressed, Joe?) Cristiano offers that cooperation would get us all a lot farther than competition.” Applause from everybody on that one. I raise my glass in salute. I’ve raised a few too many glasses in salute in my life, but what the hell.

Societies such as Italy, Greece and many others are viewed by global capitalism as inferior economies. Especially agrarian societies: different rates of exchange and economies of scale, are set for them because capitalism benefits from the bonuses of synergies in scale and the virtual economy. Never do global capitalists want to see regional food security, energy security, or any other kind of security for that matter.

And I look at the faces of these young men and women, who are among the brightest, best educated and common good oriented the world has to offer. A taxi’s headlights flash through the window of the darkened bottiliberia. Each face is illuminated for a moment, then golden dimness again prevails. And I am saddened.

I do not expect that the world they have inherited will show them one ounce of mercy. But it is heartening to see clear competent minds drawing the right conclusions.

And I ask myself, what chance does America’s far less informed, and purposefully misled public stand against all this?

One shudders.

Bob Dylan - Ballad of a Thin Man

2010-10-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

A final goodbye

2010-10-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

My life had become a fabulous song.

I felt so strong.

So strong that much of it could be wasted.

In the singing of it, I felt the fate of all things.

Sufferation.

Even the bravest and the strongest must eventually know.

Activity is not always life, but sometimes the wasting of life.

A million lives had become my own. Some were. Some were not.

Were these the sophistries of madness? Some were. Some were not.

I could recite them all. I know the system.

But endless sadness is not conducive to life.

To life.

My health was threatened. Terror arrived.

I fell into a slumber for many days, many weeks, many months.

I wandered through horrifying dreamscapes of hypnogagic trauma.

Ripe for death, ripe for rage, ripe for an absolute lostness unconcerned with limits.

My perilous road and my weakness led me through the deepest crevasses of this world.

Through caves, through shadows, through whirlwinds.

I had been to the mountain. I had touched the eternal mother.

I had fisted her and prayed in her humble chapel.

I was forced to travel, to distract myself from the enchantments crowding in upon my brain.

Follow that star. You will surely find the baby. Pretty little baby.

Over the sea, which I loved as though it were sure to cleanse me of a defilement, I saw the consoling cross arise.

A tender cheek, a destiny, a strange vision of hope.

But not for me.

Not for me.

I am damned by the rainbow.

Damned by the sea.

Damned by the rats.

Damned by the children unborn.

Damned even by the rain drops falling upon my cheek.

Happiness is my fatality, my remorse, my worm.

I know the sad truth.

My life will always be too immense to be devoted to strength and beauty.

Where is my flawless soul? My hope? My ledger?

Nowhere. Nowhere to be found.

And there is nothing else left to desire.

Charm has taken my heart and cast it to the four winds.

Efforts!

Exultations!

Dramatic wishes!

Walls breached!

Oh seasons!

Oh homes!

Oh lost nights of tender mercies!

Oh deep fucking of illuminated twats!

Oh old autumnal bareness everywhere!

Gone, gone, and gone again.

They have all taken flight.

Yet - I trust - and do not believe.

This too shall pass.

This too shall pass.

And I shall greet beauty again, but differently, in the fire next time.

Stevie Wonder at Luther Vandross' funeral

2010-10-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

Luther Vandross - A House is not a Home

2010-10-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

BBC: al Qaeda does not exist

2010-10-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

Sorry to say and so sad to report

2010-10-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

Wily E. Coyote - more aware than 99.99% of all Amerikkkans

In the ongoing moral, political and financial collapse of the Amerikkkan empire, we keep hitting marker after marker.

Roundup of leftists and anti-war protestors? Check.

Articles here, here, and here.

Amerikkkans are pussies, trapped in a Huxleyean soft totalitarian nightmare.

The Europeans, however, still have the nuts and ovaries to fuck shit up and resist.

Take the red pill, not the blue pill.

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air — however slight — lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." - Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

True? True.

Oh well.

Peak everything

2010-09-30T23:15:00.000-07:00

Richard Heinberg

Here is a real life Cassandra to steer you away from the happy talk of the consensus reality towards the truth of "a future of stark limitations" that is coming very soon.

His ideas are clear, concise, horrifying, and impervious to contradiction.

Do yourself a favor and watch all six of these videos. Then make some real plans, not happy talk plans.

As Vault-Co says, "you'd better pack it."

You'd really better.

Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything - Part 1

Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything - Part 2

Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything - Part 3

Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything - Part 4

Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything - Part 5

Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything - Part 6

The Politics of Terror as the Business of Terror by Douglas Valentine

2010-09-02T22:56:00.000-07:00

Douglas Valentine

from Dissident Voice

The politics of terror are the greatest covert operation ever.

In explaining why, I’ll begin by defining some terms, because, when discussing the covert op called “the politics of terror,” words and their management are all important.

How are politics and terror actually defined: how are these meanings manipulated; for what purposes, and by whom?

Terrorism is defined as “violence against civilians intended to obtain a political purpose.”

This is an ambiguous phrase, which begs the questions: what are politics and violence?

Politics is defined as “the process by which groups of people make collective decisions.” And violence is the use of force to compel a person or group to do or think something against their will. That includes the violence of words – of threatening to hurt – and of social structures, as well as the violence of deeds.

So, by definition, terrorism is political violence – hurting people, or threatening to hurt them, in order to make them govern themselves against their will.

In America, terrorism is always condemned by the government, and, accordingly, America is never a perpetrator of terrorism, but always the victims of it. The US war on terror is the ultimate expression of this principle: it is a military response to terrorism; violence in self-defense, not (ostensibly) violence for a political purpose.

That’s the official story – the assumption. But I’m going to show that America does engage in terrorism – violence against civilians for political purposes. This “state” terrorism, however, is covert, in so far as it is equated with national security, and thanks to that built-in ambiguity, it has both stated and unstated purpose.

The State and Unstated Policy in America

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. But who really makes the overarching political decisions in America? Who governs us?

The two political parties represent the people and they compete for control of the government. Republicans generally favor business and Democrats favor labor. The political division is, generally, class based.

Now, the government can be controlled by either political party; but the state endures – “the state” being the nation’s indispensable industries and infrastructure (banking, auto industry, insurance, Microsoft), and the institutions which defend the nation’s enduring interests: the military, law enforcement, the intelligence & security services.

In Europe they often, cynically, refer to the state as “industry” or Big Business. In America we tend to call “the state” the Establishment – an ambiguous word that needs to be defined.

The dictionary defines Establishment as, “An exclusive group of powerful people who rule a government or society by means of private agreements and decisions.”

I would venture to say that the interests of the state and the Establishment are the same, and that the definition of Establishment with a capital E is the pivotal phrase in discussing “state” terrorism.

Consider this: there is the politics of the two parties vying for control of the government, and there is the Establishment, the state, making the covert (ostensibly non-political) decisions that effectively govern America.

Many of those covert decisions concern national security: they are unstated policy.

Moreover, these covert policy decisions about national security are made by people who control the military, law enforcement, and intelligence & security services. These guardians of “the state” are collectively called the National Security Establishment.

Like the Establishment that secretly rules the “state,” the National Security Establishment is an exclusive group that is not accountable to the political whims of the people.

These professional guardians of the state – the Establishment – are assumed to be above partisan politics. Their loyalty is assumed to be to the law or national security. And that assumption is the Big Lie upon which state terrorism is based.

Yes, it is true that the National Security Establishment is not accountable to the people: and, in fact, it has built a series of ever-larger, concentric moats around itself called the National Security State, precisely to keep the people out of its business.

The National Security Establishment rules the National Security State, with an iron fist, but it is pure propaganda that the National Security Establishment and State are not political.

In order to get inside the National Security Establishment, and rise to a position of authority within it, one must be born there (like Bush – make a billion like Gates), or submit to years of right-wing political indoctrination calibrated to a series of increasingly restrictive security clearances.

Political indoctrination – adopting the correct right-wing ideology – and security clearances represent the drawbridge across the moats.

The National Security State is the covert social structure of the Establishment, and it has as its job not just defending the Establishment from foreign enemies, but also expanding the Establishment’s economic and military influence abroad, while preserving its class prerogatives at home.

By “class prerogatives,” I mean the National Security State is designed to keep the lower class from exerting any political control over the state; especially, redistributing the Establishment’s private wealth.

To these unstated ends – imperialism abroad and repression at home – the National Security State engages in terrorism – political violence – on behalf of the Establishment.

Indeed, the National Security State is political violence, terrorism, in its purest form.

The Establishment and its National Security State as Terrorism

The lower classes in America have little voice in making government or state policy. Some are hopeless, others content: but in either case, voter turnout is a mere 54%.

Whether hopeless or content, they know they cannot fight conventional thinking. For example, when the Establishment exerts its influence, it is not considered politics; it is simply the status quo. The rich create jobs and must be accommodated with trillion dollar bailouts, paid for by workers taking furloughs.

That’s just the way it is. Politicians in the service of the Establishment, for over-arching reasons of national security, have to keep the capitalist financial system afloat.

It is the same thing with the National Security Establishment: America invaded Iraq, and there was nothing the people could do about it. The decision was made for them. Peace activists, least of all, had no voice in the decision, because they are assumed to have no stake in national security. You will not find peace activists in the National Security Establishment; and that political repression is covert state terrorism.

Likewise, if labor seeks to exercise influence, its efforts are described as exploiting the state for more than it deserves, because it does not have an enduring stake in the state.

It is a fact: only Establishment wealth – ownership – is equated with national security.

Consider the immortal words of Leona Helmsley: “Only the little people pay taxes.”

That injustice in the tax code is political repression and, in so far as it makes the people fearful, it is state terrorism. The Establishment fears losing its loopholes, while workers and the poor fear losing their homes: two types of terror, one for each class, one stated, one unstated.

The Establishment engages imperialism and political repression through propaganda (word management violence) and social structures. This state terrorism is unstated, covert.

Only when the people rebel and challenge the Establishment is the word terrorism applied.

Likewise, the military, police or intelligence causes of rebellion, or responses to it, are never called terrorism: they are national security.

And that’s how the management of words helps to repress the lower classes.

Language and the Psychology of State Terror

America’s industrial sized war machine was never said to terrorize Iraq; the invasion was not political – because the war machine is owned by the Establishment.

The Establishment profiting from war is not politics; it is ideological neutral “profits.”

In fact, America exerts its unwanted political influence overseas, through the state terror of aircraft carrier fleets, bombers, nuclear subs, shock and awe invasions, pacification programs, the overthrow of governments, and support of repressive puppet regimes.

This state terrorism, which you never hear about, is the biggest covert psychological warfare operation of all time.

This psywar operation depends on narrowly defining terrorism as a suicide bomber, a hijacked plane, the decapitated body of a collaborator: the “selective terrorism” of rebels and nationalists who, outgunned, and outlawed in their own country, have no other options, other than submission.

The purpose of selective terror is psychological: to isolate collaborators, while demonstrating to the people the ability of the rebels to strike at their oppressors.

Shock and Awe, and brutal pacification cam-paigns – state terrorism – prevent people from making a living – selective terrorism does not.

That’s a big, meaningful “class” difference.

The National Security Establishment understands that selective terror achieves political and psychological goals that state terror does not – that it rallies people to revolutionary ideals. So the National Security Establishment engages in selective terror too, by targeting the rebel, his family and friends in their homes.

This is the selective terror con-ducted by counter-terrorists. But don’t be confused: it is terrorism. All terror is psychological and political; state terror by immobilizing people and making them responsive, submissive, apathetic, and/or ostensibly “content.”

The National Security Establishment fully understands that once people have been terrorized, they have been politically defeated, without necessarily receiving bullets.

As former Director of Central Intelligence William Colby once said: “The implication or latent threat of terror was sufficient to insure that the people would comply.”

This principle of the psychological use of “the implication or latent threat of terror” is what brings us back to America and the business of terror.

The Business of Terror

State terror – colonization abroad and political repression at home – is a key means of extracting profits and maintaining ownership of property. Ask the American Indian.

In its colonies, the US engages in state terrorism by removing all legal protections for rebels; detention, torture, and summary execution are the price for rebellion against US policy.

State terrorism overseas, imperialism, is never acknowledged by the media, because the media is a big business; indeed, two of the major networks are owned by defense contractors.

And state terrorism applied domestically to ensure “internal” security is never acknowledged – America says it has no political prisoners. But the National Security State is well thought out, by professionals in language management, and political and psychological warfare, aimed at you.

“Personal violence is for the amateur in dominance,” says Johan Galtung, a founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies, but “structural violence is the tool of the professional. The amateur who wants to dominate uses guns; the professional uses social structure. The legal criminality of the social system and its institutions, of government…is tacit violence. Structural violence is a structure of exploitation and social injustice.”

As Colby said: “The implication or latent threat is enough to insure people will comply.”

The war on terror and its domestic version “homeland security” are the law of the land – America’s new legally criminal social structure based on administrative detention, enshrined in The Patriot Act and a number of executive orders, some secret.

This lack of due process comes on top of a justice system already skewed to protect the propertied elite and pack the prisons with the poor, through “structural violence,” mainly the drug wars.

The Establishment’s new anti-terror and anti-drug laws make the National Security State the most fearsome covert political and psywar machine the world has ever seen. And the National Security State is growing: the “Top Secret America” series in the Washington Post put it at 750,000 cadres.

This secret state within a state extends into the homeland’s critical infrastructure and beyond. For example, the arms industry provides good jobs, making American imperial aggression seem a positive value.

And this is how the psyched-out people become one of the moats.

As it is modeled on the totalitarian corporate paradigm, the National Security State in all its manifestations fits the classic definition of a fascist dictatorship. And we know what its intentions are. They have been stated.

In the days after 9-11, right wing Republican stalwart, Kenneth W. Starr, the Clinton inquisitor, said the danger of terrorism requires “deference to the judgments of the political branches with respect to matters of national security.”

But is there an on-going emergency that requires defer to the political branches, meaning the right-wing ideologues who rule the National Security State? And what does it mean for Establishment opponents if due process is completely abandoned at home, and subjected to politics?

Michael Ledeen, a former counter-terror expert on Reagan’s National Security Council, blamed 9-11 on Clinton “for failing to properly organize our nation’s security apparatus.”

Ledeen’s solution to the problem of those who sneered at security was “to stamp out” the “corrupt habits of mind.” By which he means Liberalism.

In other words, the reactionary right wing that owns the National Security State wants to impose its total rule on the people in order to create a security conscious, uniform citizenry – marching in lock step, flags waving – that is necessary to win the war on terror.

This is how the National Security professionals are incrementally creating the requisite fascist social structure – through terror, the best organizing principle ever.

“This is time for the old motto, ‘kill them all, let God sort ‘em out.’ New times require new people with new standards,” Ledeen asserted. “The entire political world will understand it and applaud it. And it will give us a chance to prevail.”

When Ledeen says “political” world he means the “owners of the business” of state terror, the right wing ideologues who pack the National Security State and the capitalist Establishment they serve.

And they have won the propaganda war, folks.

The Unmaking of a Company Man by Andrew Bacevich

2010-09-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

Andrew Bacevich

from Common Dreams

"Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable: He knows what he wants and where he's headed; when it comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the inclination. All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.

My own education did not commence until I had reached middle age. I can fix its start date with precision: for me, education began in Berlin, on a winter's evening, at the Brandenburg Gate, not long after the Berlin Wall had fallen.

As an officer in the U.S. Army I had spent considerable time in Germany. Until that moment, however, my family and I had never had occasion to visit this most famous of German cities, still littered with artifacts of a deeply repellent history. At the end of a long day of exploration, we found ourselves in what had, until just months before, been the communist East. It was late and we were hungry, but I insisted on walking the length of the Unter den Linden, from the River Spree to the gate itself. A cold rain was falling and the pavement glistened. The buildings lining the avenue, dating from the era of Prussian kings, were dark, dirty, and pitted. Few people were about. It was hardly a night for sightseeing.

For as long as I could remember, the Brandenburg Gate had been the preeminent symbol of the age and Berlin the epicenter of contemporary history. Yet by the time I made it to the once and future German capital, history was already moving on. The Cold War had abruptly ended. A divided city and a divided nation had reunited.

For Americans who had known Berlin only from a distance, the city existed primarily as a metaphor. Pick a date -- 1933, 1942, 1945, 1948, 1961, 1989 -- and Berlin becomes an instructive symbol of power, depravity, tragedy, defiance, endurance, or vindication. For those inclined to view the past as a chronicle of parables, the modern history of Berlin offered an abundance of material. The greatest of those parables emerged from the events of 1933 to 1945, an epic tale of evil ascendant, belatedly confronted, then heroically overthrown. A second narrative, woven from events during the intense period immediately following World War II, saw hopes for peace dashed, yielding bitter antagonism but also great resolve. The ensuing stand-off -- the "long twilight struggle," in John Kennedy's memorable phrase -- formed the centerpiece of the third parable, its central theme stubborn courage in the face of looming peril. Finally came the exhilarating events of 1989, with freedom ultimately prevailing, not only in Berlin, but throughout Eastern Europe.

What exactly was I looking for at the Brandenburg Gate? Perhaps confirmation that those parables, which I had absorbed and accepted as true, were just that. Whatever I expected, what I actually found was a cluster of shabby-looking young men, not German, hawking badges, medallions, hats, bits of uniforms, and other artifacts of the mighty Red Army. It was all junk, cheaply made and shoddy. For a handful of deutsche marks, I bought a wristwatch emblazoned with the symbol of the Soviet armored corps. Within days, it ceased to work.

Huddling among the scarred columns, those peddlers -- almost certainly off-duty Russian soldiers awaiting redeployment home -- constituted a subversive presence. They were loose ends of a story that was supposed to have ended neatly when the Berlin Wall came down. As we hurried off to find warmth and a meal, this disconcerting encounter stuck with me, and I began to entertain this possibility: that the truths I had accumulated over the previous twenty years as a professional soldier -- especially truths about the Cold War and U.S. foreign policy -- might not be entirely true.

By temperament and upbringing, I had always taken comfort in orthodoxy. In a life spent subject to authority, deference had become a deeply ingrained habit. I found assurance in conventional wisdom. Now, I started, however hesitantly, to suspect that orthodoxy might be a sham. I began to appreciate that authentic truth is never simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high -- whether by presidents, prime ministers, or archbishops -- is inherently suspect. The powerful, I came to see, reveal truth only to the extent that it suits them. Even then, the truths to which they testify come wrapped in a nearly invisible filament of dissembling, deception, and duplicity. The exercise of power necessarily involves manipulation and is antithetical to candor.

I came to these obvious points embarrassingly late in life. "Nothing is so astonishing in education," the historian Henry Adams once wrote, "as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts." Until that moment I had too often confused education with accumulating and cataloging facts. In Berlin, at the foot of the Brandenburg Gate, I began to realize that I had been a naïf. And so, at age 41, I set out, in a halting and haphazard fashion, to acquire a genuine education.

Twenty years later I've made only modest progress. What follows is an accounting of what I have learned thus far.

Visiting a Third-World Version of Germany

In October 1990, I'd gotten a preliminary hint that something might be amiss in my prior education. On October 3rd, communist East Germany -- formally the German Democratic Republic (GDR) -- ceased to exist and German reunification was officially secured. That very week I accompanied a group of American military officers to the city of Jena in what had been the GDR. Our purpose was self-consciously educational -- to study the famous battle of Jena-Auerstädt in which Napoleon Bonaparte and his marshals had inflicted an epic defeat on Prussian forces commanded by the Duke of Brunswick. (The outcome of that 1806 battle inspired the philosopher Hegel, then residing in Jena, to declare that the "end of history" was at hand. The conclusion of the Cold War had only recently elicited a similarly exuberant judgment from the American scholar Francis Fukuyama.)

On this trip we did learn a lot about the conduct of that battle, although mainly inert facts possessing little real educational value. Inadvertently, we also gained insight into the reality of life on the far side of what Americans had habitually called the Iron Curtain, known in U.S. military vernacular as "the trace." In this regard, the trip proved nothing less than revelatory. The educational content of this excursion would -- for me -- be difficult to exaggerate.

As soon as our bus crossed the old Inner German Border, we entered a time warp. For U.S. troops garrisoned throughout Bavaria and Hesse, West Germany had for decades served as a sort of theme park -- a giant Epcot filled with quaint villages, stunning scenery, and superb highways, along with ample supplies of quite decent food, excellent beer, and accommodating women. Now, we found ourselves face-to-face with an altogether different Germany. Although commonly depicted as the most advanced and successful component of the Soviet Empire, East Germany more closely resembled part of the undeveloped world.

The roads -- even the main highways -- were narrow and visibly crumbling. Traffic posed little problem. Apart from a few sluggish Trabants and Wartburgs -- East German automobiles that tended to a retro primitivism -- and an occasional exhaust-spewing truck, the way was clear. The villages through which we passed were forlorn and the small farms down at the heels. For lunch we stopped at a roadside stand. The proprietor happily accepted our D-marks, offering us inedible sausages in exchange. Although the signs assured us that we remained in a land of German speakers, it was a country that had not yet recovered from World War II.

Upon arrival in Jena, we checked into the Hotel Schwarzer Bär, identified by our advance party as the best hostelry in town. It turned out to be a rundown fleabag. As the senior officer present, I was privileged to have a room in which the plumbing functioned. Others were not so lucky.

Jena itself was a midsized university city, with its main academic complex immediately opposite our hotel. A very large bust of Karl Marx, mounted on a granite pedestal and badly in need of cleaning, stood on the edge of the campus. Briquettes of soft coal used for home heating made the air all but unbreathable and coated everything with soot. In the German cities we knew, pastels predominated -- houses and apartment blocks painted pale green, muted salmon, and soft yellow. Here everything was brown and gray.

That evening we set out in search of dinner. The restaurants within walking distance were few and unattractive. We chose badly, a drab establishment in which fresh vegetables were unavailable and the wurst inferior. The adequacy of the local beer provided the sole consolation.

The following morning, on the way to the battlefield, we noted a significant Soviet military presence, mostly in the form of trucks passing by -- to judge by their appearance, designs that dated from the 1950s. To our surprise, we discovered that the Soviets had established a small training area adjacent to where Napoleon had vanquished the Prussians. Although we had orders to avoid contact with any Russians, the presence of their armored troops going through their paces riveted us. Here was something of far greater immediacy than Bonaparte and the Duke of Brunswick: "the other," about which we had for so long heard so much but knew so little. Through binoculars, we watched a column of Russian armored vehicles -- BMPs, in NATO parlance -- traversing what appeared to be a drivers' training course. Suddenly, one of them began spewing smoke. Soon thereafter, it burst into flames.

Here was education, although at the time I had only the vaguest sense of its significance.

An Ambitious Team Player Assailed by Doubts

These visits to Jena and Berlin offered glimpses of a reality radically at odds with my most fundamental assumptions. Uninvited and unexpected, subversive forces had begun to infiltrate my consciousness. Bit by bit, my worldview started to crumble.

That worldview had derived from this conviction: that American power manifested a commitment to global leadership, and that both together expressed and affirmed the nation's enduring devotion to its founding ideals. That American power, policies, and purpose were bound together in a neat, internally consistent package, each element drawing strength from and reinforcing the others, was something I took as a given. That, during my adult life, a penchant for interventionism had become a signature of U.S. policy did not -- to me, at least -- in any way contradict America's aspirations for peace. Instead, a willingness to expend lives and treasure in distant places testified to the seriousness of those aspirations. That, during this same period, the United States had amassed an arsenal of over 31,000 nuclear weapons, some small number of them assigned to units in which I had served, was not at odds with our belief in the inalienable right to life and liberty; rather, threats to life and liberty had compelled the United States to acquire such an arsenal and maintain it in readiness for instant use.

I was not so naïve as to believe that the American record had been without flaws. Yet I assured myself that any errors or misjudgments had been committed in good faith. Furthermore, circumstances permitted little real choice. In Southeast Asia as in Western Europe, in the Persian Gulf as in the Western Hemisphere, the United States had simply done what needed doing. Viable alternatives did not exist. To consent to any dilution of American power would be to forfeit global leadership, thereby putting at risk safety, prosperity, and freedom, not only our own but also that of our friends and allies.

The choices seemed clear enough. On one side was the status quo: the commitments, customs, and habits that defined American globalism, implemented by the national security apparatus within which I functioned as a small cog. On the other side was the prospect of appeasement, isolationism, and catastrophe. The only responsible course was the one to which every president since Harry Truman had adhered.

For me, the Cold War had played a crucial role in sustaining that worldview. Given my age, upbringing, and professional background, it could hardly have been otherwise. Although the great rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union had contained moments of considerable anxiety -- I remember my father, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, stocking our basement with water and canned goods -- it served primarily to clarify, not to frighten. The Cold War provided a framework that organized and made sense of contemporary history. It offered a lineup and a scorecard. That there existed bad Germans and good Germans, their Germans and our Germans, totalitarian Germans and Germans who, like Americans, passionately loved freedom was, for example, a proposition I accepted as dogma. Seeing the Cold War as a struggle between good and evil answered many questions, consigned others to the periphery, and rendered still others irrelevant.

Back in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, more than a few members of my generation had rejected the conception of the Cold War as a Manichean struggle. Here too, I was admittedly a slow learner. Yet having kept the faith long after others had lost theirs, the doubts that eventually assailed me were all the more disorienting.

Granted, occasional suspicions had appeared long before Jena and Berlin. My own Vietnam experience had generated its share, which I had done my best to suppress. I was, after all, a serving soldier. Except in the narrowest of terms, the military profession, in those days at least, did not look kindly on nonconformity. Climbing the ladder of career success required curbing maverick tendencies. To get ahead, you needed to be a team player. Later, when studying the history of U.S. foreign relations in graduate school, I was pelted with challenges to orthodoxy, which I vigorously deflected. When it came to education, graduate school proved a complete waste of time -- a period of intense study devoted to the further accumulation of facts, while I exerted myself to ensuring that they remained inert.

Now, however, my personal circumstances were changing. Shortly after the passing of the Cold War, my military career ended. Education thereby became not only a possibility, but also a necessity.

In measured doses, mortification cleanses the soul. It's the perfect antidote for excessive self-regard. After 23 years spent inside the U.S. Army seemingly going somewhere, I now found myself on the outside going nowhere in particular. In the self-contained and cloistered universe of regimental life, I had briefly risen to the status of minor spear carrier. The instant I took off my uniform, that status vanished. I soon came to a proper appreciation of my own insignificance, a salutary lesson that I ought to have absorbed many years earlier.

As I set out on what eventually became a crablike journey toward a new calling as a teacher and writer -- a pilgrimage of sorts -- ambition in the commonly accepted meaning of the term ebbed. This did not happen all at once. Yet gradually, trying to grab one of life's shiny brass rings ceased being a major preoccupation. Wealth, power, and celebrity became not aspirations but subjects for critical analysis. History -- especially the familiar narrative of the Cold War -- no longer offered answers; instead, it posed perplexing riddles. Easily the most nagging was this one: How could I have so profoundly misjudged the reality of what lay on the far side of the Iron Curtain?

Had I been insufficiently attentive? Or was it possible that I had been snookered all along? Contemplating such questions, while simultaneously witnessing the unfolding of the "long 1990s" -- the period bookended by two wars with Iraq when American vainglory reached impressive new heights -- prompted the realization that I had grossly misinterpreted the threat posed by America's adversaries. Yet that was the lesser half of the problem. Far worse than misperceiving "them" was the fact that I had misperceived "us." What I thought I knew best I actually understood least. Here, the need for education appeared especially acute.

George W. Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into opposition. Claims that once seemed elementary -- above all, claims relating to the essentially benign purposes of American power -- now appeared preposterous. The contradictions that found an ostensibly peace-loving nation committing itself to a doctrine of preventive war became too great to ignore. The folly and hubris of the policy makers who heedlessly thrust the nation into an ill-defined and open-ended "global war on terror" without the foggiest notion of what victory would look like, how it would be won, and what it might cost approached standards hitherto achieved only by slightly mad German warlords. During the era of containment, the United States had at least maintained the pretense of a principled strategy; now, the last vestiges of principle gave way to fantasy and opportunism. With that, the worldview to which I had adhered as a young adult and carried into middle age dissolved completely.

Credo and Trinity

What should stand in the place of such discarded convictions? Simply inverting the conventional wisdom, substituting a new Manichean paradigm for the old discredited version -- the United States taking the place of the Soviet Union as the source of the world's evil -- would not suffice. Yet arriving at even an approximation of truth would entail subjecting conventional wisdom, both present and past, to sustained and searching scrutiny. Cautiously at first but with growing confidence, this I vowed to do.

Doing so meant shedding habits of conformity acquired over decades. All of my adult life I had been a company man, only dimly aware of the extent to which institutional loyalties induce myopia. Asserting independence required first recognizing the extent to which I had been socialized to accept certain things as unimpeachable. Here then were the preliminary steps essential to making education accessible. Over a period of years, a considerable store of debris had piled up. Now, it all had to go. Belatedly, I learned that more often than not what passes for conventional wisdom is simply wrong. Adopting fashionable attitudes to demonstrate one's trustworthiness -- the world of politics is flush with such people hoping thereby to qualify for inclusion in some inner circle -- is akin to engaging in prostitution in exchange for promissory notes. It's not only demeaning but downright foolhardy.

Washington Rules aims to take stock of conventional wisdom in its most influential and enduring form, namely the package of assumptions, habits, and precepts that have defined the tradition of statecraft to which the United States has adhered since the end of World War II -- the era of global dominance now drawing to a close. This postwar tradition combines two components, each one so deeply embedded in the American collective consciousness as to have all but disappeared from view.

The first component specifies norms according to which the international order ought to work and charges the United States with responsibility for enforcing those norms. Call this the American credo. In the simplest terms, the credo summons the United States -- and the United States alone -- to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world. In a celebrated manifesto issued at the dawn of what he termed "The American Century," Henry R. Luce made the case for this spacious conception of global leadership. Writing in Life magazine in early 1941, the influential publisher exhorted his fellow citizens to "accept wholeheartedly our duty to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." Luce thereby captured what remains even today the credo's essence.

Luce's concept of an American Century, an age of unquestioned American global primacy, resonated, especially in Washington. His evocative phrase found a permanent place in the lexicon of national politics. (Recall that the neoconservatives who, in the 1990s, lobbied for more militant U.S. policies named their enterprise the Project for a New American Century.) So, too, did Luce's expansive claim of prerogatives to be exercised by the United States. Even today, whenever public figures allude to America's responsibility to lead, they signal their fidelity to this creed. Along with respectful allusions to God and "the troops," adherence to Luce's credo has become a de facto prerequisite for high office. Question its claims and your prospects of being heard in the hubbub of national politics become nil.

Note, however, that the duty Luce ascribed to Americans has two components. It is not only up to Americans, he wrote, to choose the purposes for which they would bring their influence to bear, but to choose the means as well. Here we confront the second component of the postwar tradition of American statecraft.

With regard to means, that tradition has emphasized activism over example, hard power over soft, and coercion (often styled "negotiating from a position of strength") over suasion. Above all, the exercise of global leadership as prescribed by the credo obliges the United States to maintain military capabilities staggeringly in excess of those required for self-defense. Prior to World War II, Americans by and large viewed military power and institutions with skepticism, if not outright hostility. In the wake of World War II, that changed. An affinity for military might emerged as central to the American identity.

By the midpoint of the twentieth century, "the Pentagon" had ceased to be merely a gigantic five-sided building. Like "Wall Street" at the end of the nineteenth century, it had become Leviathan, its actions veiled in secrecy, its reach extending around the world. Yet while the concentration of power in Wall Street had once evoked deep fear and suspicion, Americans by and large saw the concentration of power in the Pentagon as benign. Most found it reassuring.

A people who had long seen standing armies as a threat to liberty now came to believe that the preservation of liberty required them to lavish resources on the armed forces. During the Cold War, Americans worried ceaselessly about falling behind the Russians, even though the Pentagon consistently maintained a position of overall primacy. Once the Soviet threat disappeared, mere primacy no longer sufficed. With barely a whisper of national debate, unambiguous and perpetual global military supremacy emerged as an essential predicate to global leadership.

Every great military power has its distinctive signature. For Napoleonic France, it was the levée en masse -- the people in arms animated by the ideals of the Revolution. For Great Britain in the heyday of empire, it was command of the seas, sustained by a dominant fleet and a network of far-flung outposts from Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope to Singapore and Hong Kong. Germany from the 1860s to the 1940s (and Israel from 1948 to 1973) took another approach, relying on a potent blend of tactical flexibility and operational audacity to achieve battlefield superiority.

The abiding signature of American military power since World War II has been of a different order altogether. The United States has not specialized in any particular type of war. It has not adhered to a fixed tactical style. No single service or weapon has enjoyed consistent favor. At times, the armed forces have relied on citizen-soldiers to fill their ranks; at other times, long-service professionals. Yet an examination of the past 60 years of U.S. military policy and practice does reveal important elements of continuity. Call them the sacred trinity: an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism.

Together, credo and trinity -- the one defining purpose, the other practice -- constitute the essence of the way that Washington has attempted to govern and police the American Century. The relationship between the two is symbiotic. The trinity lends plausibility to the credo's vast claims. For its part, the credo justifies the trinity's vast requirements and exertions. Together they provide the basis for an enduring consensus that imparts a consistency to U.S. policy regardless of which political party may hold the upper hand or who may be occupying the White House. From the era of Harry Truman to the age of Barack Obama, that consensus has remained intact. It defines the rules to which Washington adheres; it determines the precepts by which Washington rules.

As used here, Washington is less a geographic expression than a set of interlocking institutions headed by people who, whether acting officially or unofficially, are able to put a thumb on the helm of state. Washington, in this sense, includes the upper echelons of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government. It encompasses the principal components of the national security state -- the departments of Defense, State, and, more recently, Homeland Security, along with various agencies comprising the intelligence and federal law enforcement communities. Its ranks extend to select think tanks and interest groups. Lawyers, lobbyists, fixers, former officials, and retired military officers who still enjoy access are members in good standing. Yet Washington also reaches beyond the Beltway to include big banks and other financial institutions, defense contractors and major corporations, television networks and elite publications like the New York Times, even quasi-academic entities like the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. With rare exceptions, acceptance of the Washington rules forms a prerequisite for entry into this world.

My purpose in writing Washiington Rules is fivefold: first, to trace the origins and evolution of the Washington rules -- both the credo that inspires consensus and the trinity in which it finds expression; second, to subject the resulting consensus to critical inspection, showing who wins and who loses and also who foots the bill; third, to explain how the Washington rules are perpetuated, with certain views privileged while others are declared disreputable; fourth, to demonstrate that the rules themselves have lost what ever utility they may once have possessed, with their implications increasingly pernicious and their costs increasingly unaffordable; and finally, to argue for readmitting disreputable (or "radical") views to our national security debate, in effect legitimating alternatives to the status quo. In effect, my aim is to invite readers to share in the process of education on which I embarked two decades ago in Berlin.

The Washington rules were forged at a moment when American influence and power were approaching their acme. That moment has now passed. The United States has drawn down the stores of authority and goodwill it had acquired by 1945. Words uttered in Washington command less respect than once was the case. Americans can ill afford to indulge any longer in dreams of saving the world, much less remaking it in our own image. The curtain is now falling on the American Century.

Similarly, the United States no longer possesses sufficient wherewithal to sustain a national security strategy that relies on global military presence and global power projection to underwrite a policy of global interventionism. Touted as essential to peace, adherence to that strategy has propelled the United States into a condition approximating perpetual war, as the military misadventures of the past decade have demonstrated.

To anyone with eyes to see, the shortcomings inherent in the Washington rules have become plainly evident. Although those most deeply invested in perpetuating its conventions will insist otherwise, the tradition to which Washington remains devoted has begun to unravel. Attempting to prolong its existence might serve Washington's interests, but it will not serve the interests of the American people.

Devising an alternative to the reigning national security paradigm will pose a daunting challenge -- especially if Americans look to "Washington" for fresh thinking. Yet doing so has become essential.

In one sense, the national security policies to which Washington so insistently adheres express what has long been the preferred American approach to engaging the world beyond our borders. That approach plays to America's presumed strong suit -- since World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold War, thought to be military power. In another sense, this reliance on military might creates excuses for the United States to avoid serious engagement: confidence in American arms has made it unnecessary to attend to what others might think or to consider how their aspirations might differ from our own. In this way, the Washington rules reinforce American provincialism -- a national trait for which the United States continues to pay dearly.

The persistence of these rules has also provided an excuse to avoid serious self-engagement. From this perspective, confidence that the credo and the trinity will oblige others to accommodate themselves to America's needs or desires -- whether for cheap oil, cheap credit, or cheap consumer goods -- has allowed Washington to postpone or ignore problems demanding attention here at home. Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland and Detroit. Purporting to support the troops in their crusade to free the world obviates any obligation to assess the implications of how Americans themselves choose to exercise freedom.

When Americans demonstrate a willingness to engage seriously with others, combined with the courage to engage seriously with themselves, then real education just might begin."

Usraeli attack on Iran back on the table?

2010-08-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

Israeli F15 fighter-bombers

Seems like there is a new crescendo of voices calling for a Usraeli air attack on Iran lately, at a level we haven't heard since the waning days of the Cheney administration.

A bedrock assumption of the "Washington consensus" and a prerequisite for "access" to the inner sanctum of American political power is unconditional fealty to Israeli hard liners.

Israel says it fears an Iranian nuclear bomb. This is, of course, asinine nonsense. Iran is a signatory to the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty (while Israel is not) and allows international inspections to its nuclear facilities. The best estimates from American intelligence is that Iran ceased any weapons component of its nuclear program around 2003.

It is an open secret that Israel has approximately 400 nuclear weapons. Clearly, Israel's real objective is "regime change," enabling it to remain the unchallenged regional power.

But there seems to be a lack of consensus among the American policy elite on the issue. Leaving the ridiculous notions of Iran's supposed aspirations to obtain the bomb aside, and going directly to the actual issues, many in the American policy elite want to punish a proud and powerful country that refuses to proper homage to American hegemony and is a key member of a international geopolitical power bloc that is rapidly coalescing as an alternative to that (fading) hegemony. Iran is also the easiest and most direct route to get the oil and natural gas of the Caspian Basin to the ocean for export, bypassing the Russian pipeline system to the north.

More pragmatic members of the elite, however, quite rightly see the unintended consequences of such an attack as severe, up to and including precipitating WW III and putting the final nail in the coffin of Amerikkkan empire.

But as the Wise Men of the policy elite so love to say, "all options are on the table."

Is that why the United States Defense Security Cooperation Agency recently posted notice of a request from Israel for $2 billion of fuel to Israel?

I don't know enough about military affairs to judge for sure but "60,000,000 gallons of unleaded gasoline, 284,000,000 gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel, and 100,000,000 gallons of diesel fuel" sure seems like it might be a little bit more than their standard operational needs.

Perhaps enough to get them to Tehran?

Lord knows the Obama presidency has cratered about as badly as it possibly could have, and the American economy is still in shambles and likely to get much worse.

What better distraction than the time-tested one of war, perhaps to coincide with the American primary elections?

I just hope we don't see another Usraeli false flag attack in Amerikkka to serve as casus belli.

"I just don't see it."

2010-08-25T16:19:00.000-07:00

Even one of the most prominent living philosophers in America, Stanley Fish, has a next-to-impossible time believing 911 truth.

For the life of me, I absolutely cannot fathom how anyone can research the event for 10 hours and not come away thinking the official conspiracy theory is completely full of shit. Even so-called "smart" people. It truly baffles me.

Even though he addresses it, Fish implies his deep dissatisfaction with 911 truther answers to the oft-repeated chestnut: "how could the conspirators have gotten away with it?" Adherents to the official conspiracy theory love this retort and bring it up all the time. Somehow, it is easier for them to believe that Osama bin Laden (a previous CIA asset and, by some reports, dead prior to 911) and his nitwit associates hanging out in a cave in Afghanistan and a few flight school students whose instructors said couldn't even fly Cessnas could pull it all off, but the United States and Israeli governments and their powerful allies in the private sector could not.

I read something interesting today attributed to Arthur Miller: "Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that The State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."

True to a point, in terms of peoples' propensity to ignore evidence pointing to a social world that is horrific by design. But not true enough. The state has not "lost its mind." It never had an ethical objective to begin with and therefore never had a "mind/heart" to lose. The state exists to lie, murder and steal so that the rich and powerful can get richer and more powerful. Period. That is its sole function and has been since urban sedentary agriculture began 5,000-10,000 years ago, certainly since the Peace of Westphalia solidified the nation-state system as we recognize it today. Any vague trappings of democracy and social justice that may have emerged through the nation-state were not achieved because of the good faith of the "liberal democratic state" operating as it was intended to, but simply as the most minimal window dressing needed to allow the nation-state to continue fucking us all over as hard as it possibly could without inciting revolution.

At least Fish outlines the 911 truthers' basic arraignment of the conspirators' motives, albeit snidely and with that smug sanctimonious snicker that comes from being Smart, Credible, and Well-Credentialed: 911 was done to justify ongoing imperial war abroad and the imposition of a police state at home. In spite of a mountain of evidence that this is so, and merely the continuation of centuries of American history, it is still for some reason impossible to accept, especially to the Well-Educated.

To my mind, anyone who can't accept these as primary motives is an idiot, intellectually lazy, in on the con, or a PhD from a "top tier" school. But I repeat myself.

Clearly, the military-industrial complex/national security state needed a new enemy after Communism to rationalize its existence and enrich its companies and soulless apparatchiks.

But why a police state? Sure, it is in the nature of hierarchies never to be satisfied with the amount of command and control at their disposal and to constantly seek to expand it. Visionaries like Orwell, Huxley and Brzezinski (especially in The Technotronic Era) obviously saw where it was going in the modern era. Essentially, they got it exactly right. But I think something more nefarious than a simple desire of "control for controls sake" is going on here, at this stage in human history, especially in the way police states are shaping up so rapidly and so thoroughly in the core states of global capitalism, especially the Anglophone countries.

It is because the "shadow government," the rulers above and behind the visible, elected government, the power elite, the truly rich and powerful, the ones who hire the politicians and their armies of enablers (lawyers, et al) see some things coming and coming soon. Two things in particular.

They recognize that we have absolutely destroyed the global environment and virtually every natural resource that gives the "first world" our much vaunted "standard of living" is gone. Done. Depleted. Running on fumes. Nothing left. Some call this this "peak oil" or even "peak everything."

They also realize that America is bankrupt. The figure for the federal deficit typically bandied about as the conventional wisdom is about $13 trillion. This is absolute nonsense - although, of course, you wouldn't be able to get through an economics PhD at a "top tier" school trying to contradict it. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are broke. When you factor that in, the most conservative deficit figure I've seen is about $60 trillion. The Dallas Fed has it at $100 trillion. The recent bailouts/corporate grand larceny have the taxpayers on the hook for another $27 trillion. So the figure in my mind has been around $125 trillion. I see today someone puts it $202 trillion!

That works out to approximately $666,666 for every man woman and child in Amerikkka, not even every working adult. Let's say for the sake of argument that maybe 200 million of the roughly 300 million people in America are working adults. That means they are all on the hook for $1 million. According to the most recent figures, the median annual income for working adults is about $35,000. That means it will take them 28 years of a normal, say, 45 year working career to pay back "their share" of the debt - if they turned over all of their paycheck and still somehow remained magically fed, clothed, and housed.

Clearly, this can't be paid back and never will be, although that won't keep the banksters and their minions in government from squeezing as much of it out of us as they can. It's Enron-style accounting. It's a Ponzi scheme. It will have to come crashing down at some point. What boggles my mind is how few people are really ready, willing and able to grasp how quickly this could all happen. As it is, the only thing keeping it afloat now is China's unwillingness to suffer a sudden devaluation of their $2 trillion in dollar reserves. But they see it coming too and have been dropping out of T-bills by a few percentage points a month over the last year or so, which is about as fast as you can move without creating a market panic. They are also further diversifying out of dollars into gold, other commodities, and direct foreign investments worldwide very aggressively.

Right before Enron collapsed, it was the 7th largest corporation in America in terms of market capitalization. Within a matter of weeks, it was all gone. Every penny. Similarly, the collapse of the Soviet Union only took about six months, if you time it from the kidnapping of Gorbachev in August 1991 to the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in January 1992. And no empire has ever survived indefinitely. Amerikkka is no exception.

So TPTB see the dollar/Amerikkkan economy and Amerikkka as a political entity poised to collapse and that it could happen at a dizzying speed. They also see that, even it doesn't happen at a dizzying speed, it is still inevitable. And compounded by the ramifications of "peak everything" completely decimating the "Amerikkkkan standard of living," TPTB know that they are facing the very distinct possibility of widespread civil insurrection. And because they have been engineering the mass stupidity of the Amerikkkan populace through compulsory mass schooling and media distractions for about a century, they also know that the people, not comprehending why their privileged position in the world has suddenly evaporated, will be even more pissed than if they understood why it happened.

This all has TPTB running scared which is a big part of why they engineered 911 and why they have laid the legal, "law enforcement," and military foundations for a full-blown police state in as short a period as they have, about a decade. It is not merely that their ancient dream of total control feels finally within their technical grasp. It is because they have the foresight to know the endgame of modern industrial civilization itself is upon us, that it has begun in earnest.

Does any intellectually honest observer actually believe that they established a police state to keep us safe from terrorists? Please. More people die of allergic reactions to peanuts annually than died in 911. 50,000 a year die from traffic accidents. 100,000 a year die from medical malpractice. Have we declared a war on peanuts, unsafe driving, and bad doctoring?

This, in addition to my general contempt, rage and sadness directed at anyone who participates with evil, is what irritates the shit out me towards anyone who earns their daily bread from the national security state. If these soulless shills had any fucking brains at all, this would all be transparently obvious to them. And if they have some kind of brains but subconsciously choose not to see the obvious, then they are careerist shitheels who are just in it for the money and social approval, making them even more utterly contemptible.

So when you add it all up, that is why I feel such a strong sense of urgency to get to somewhere safe, and basically rural, with a supportive community ASAP. The collapse of which I speak might take ten years, granted, but it might also take ten weeks. And the potential Usraeli aerial bombardment of Iran, which I see anytime between now and November of this year, is the wildcard in the deck that could kick it all into motion almost overnight.

I fully realize that I am in a very tiny (but rapidly growing) vanguard with the clarity of mind to see all of this. But just because our numbers are minuscule does not mean we are wrong. Look at Galileo and Copernicus.

To go somewhere safe, and basically rural, with a supportive community isn't because I want to start a garden and build a house for kicks, or simply to get out of big cities that have grown tedious to me. My decision-making matrix is far more serious than that, far more desperate, far more urgent.

Rather, it is because I see it as our best chance for something as vital and visceral as our very survival, based on a long-term analysis of macroeconomic and geostrategic trends that could spiral out of control faster than 99.99% of the people could even begin to imagine.

Will it take 10 years or 10 weeks? I don't know. But I do know that it seems far more prudent to move aggressively for self-preservation a little earlier than necessary than after it is too late.

Valedictorian speaks out against schooling in graduation speech

2010-08-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

2010 Graduating Class of Coxsackie-Athens High School

The following speech was delivered by top of the class student Erica Goldson during the graduation ceremony at Coxsackie-Athens High School on June 25, 2010

Here I stand.

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, "If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years . ."  The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast -- How long then?" Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years." "But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?" asked the student. "Thirty years," replied the Master. "But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student. "At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?"  Replied the Master, "When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path."

This is the dilemma I've faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.

Some of you may be thinking, "Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn't you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer - not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition - a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.

John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, "We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that." Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not "to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States."

Comment: The full passage reads: "The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever pretensions of politicians, pedagogues other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else."

To illustrate this idea, doesn't it perturb you to learn about the idea of "critical thinking." Is there really such a thing as "uncritically thinking?" To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?

This was happening to me, and if it wasn't for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.

And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.

We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.

The saddest part is that the majority of students don't have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can't run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be - but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.

For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, "You have to learn this for the test" is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.

For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.

For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.

So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn't have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.

I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a "see you later" when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let's go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we're smart enough to do so!

Israel massacres Freedom Flotilla passengers in international waters

2010-05-31T14:02:00.000-07:00

A flotilla carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and school supplies for besieged Gaza was attacked by Israeli forces was attacked by Israeli forces in a 4am raid.

Nine confirmed dead.

On-board were four European MPs, a Nobel laureate, priests and hundreds of other unarmed civilians.

Their last brutal and unconscionable attack on Gaza was the last straw for many in the hitherto spineless "international community."

Except for Amerikkka or course, which will support the most fascist elements of Israel no matter what. I really love this "hope and change" stuff Obama is providing.

I suspect there might finally be some kind of significant international response, led by Turkey.

Turkey takes over the U.N. Security Council on June 1. They have been having very difficult relations for the last couple of years. Many of the vessels were Turkish and the flotilla left from Turkish ports.

It's time to get right with god

2010-05-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

MLK's chilling, uplifting and prophetic speech in Memphis the day before he was killed. Part 1

Part 2

Todocon, my fellow co-founder of Tenacious Cult, turned me onto the astrological concept of the Saturn-Uranus-Pluto T Square, which occurred last in late 1930-1932 and 1964-mid 1967. Anybody who has an even passing acquaintance with history (which automatically eliminates virtually all Amerikkkans) knows that these were incredibly tumultuous periods that defined the social forms for decades to follow.

As Bill Streett summarized the nature of this T square:

"During these times, the socio-political dimensions of the collective approach conflict, if not crisis and breakdown. During these critical junctures in time, prevailing modes of economic and political discourse are pushed far from equilibrium and mounting tensions that have been ignored or repressed due to limitations of the current socio-political paradigm reach a breaking point. Simultaneously, new alternatives that range from enlightened progress to regressive barbarism rise to cope with the ensuing crises and difficulties of the time. During the period of the alignment, the problems and crises are often exaggerated or rendered more intense; real progress, forward momentum, or breakthroughs toward the challenges presented manifest after the alignment subsides."

Or, as Todocon put it more succinctly, we are staring down the barrel of "the summer of love in Nazi Germany."

It begins in June. Todocon thinks an early manifestation will be American liberals going ape shit. This makes common sense.

Obama is just codifying and legalizing the most egregiously fascistic police state initiatives put into place by Bush and his vile minions, and assuming their liberal base will remain secure regardless of anything they could possibly do, because "they have nowhere else to go."

Eventually, this kind of arrogance and meanness (Democrat or Republican) overreaches. It is inevitable. It is the nature of this kind of arrogance and meanness. Even the liberal saps currently performing incredible contortions to maintain support for Obama are finally started to realize they've been conned.

Alex Jones has called Obama called "the closer for the new world order." While this is a fair assessment, perhaps it is even bigger than that. We are the end of the 10,000 year cycle of urban sedentary agriculture and rule by the kings, the priests, and the merchants and money-changers. They think their age-old dreams of total control are finally within reach of their blood-soaked fingers.

What they don't realize is that in this pivotal moment, the tighter they try to grasp, the more it will slip away from them.

The mechanism is too tightly wound. There is too much pressure in the system. There must be a release. Let us pray this release does not come in the form of global thermonuclear war.

I haven't been able to sleep well for the last six months as I try to get through a strange and perplexing phase in pursuit of a PhD. What little sleep I have been getting has been troubled by strange dreams.

After three months of living outdoors, I have been staying in the downstairs of a cave-like duplex for a couple of months, fixing it up, and helping the owner get it ready for new tenants. Caves, a potent symbol in dream analysis and the thought of Carl Jung.

A few nights ago, I dreamed that a large number of people, about six or seven, were all moving in while I slept there, exactly where I was actually sleeping in real life. They were moving all their shit in, waking me up, and I wasn't even notified. I was really pissed but I wound up going back to sleep in the dream to ignore them.

I woke up in the dream in the duplex to the same scenario six or seven times!

It was one of those dreams I was completely sure was real life. As the scenario kept repeating itself, it kept getting weirder and weirder phenomenologically. I remember specifically thinking in the dream. "This is a bit like a Salvia Divinorium trip. Reality itself is shifting in weird and profound ways. Is this what it is going to be like after 2012?"

Without question, we are entering a transitional period of momentous changes in what we can experience with the five senses in the "everyday" world of Newtonian physics. But I am also open to the possibility that this shift might also be a shift in how we perceive reality itself, that things that have always existed around us but been occluded to our five sense suddenly become readily apprehensible, that significant elements of something akin to the psychedelic drug experience might become a part of the "everyday" experience of pretty much everybody and those who can't deal with it are going to be pretty much ass out but the trippers and the shamans and the indigenous people and other related tribes will be better able to deal with it.

I've been thinking about the nature of god lately. It is still not the angry sky father. Never was and never will be. I'm still down with what Todocon and I discussed.

It is a quantum god. Simultaneously the multiverse and all of its constituent parts, simultaneously wave and particle, simultaneously creating and being created by all of its constituent parts through the non-local communication of the collective conscious of all sentient beings in the multiverse.

But lately I am thinking there is something larger still, the "natural laws" by which these dynamics operate, something very close to karma.

It is of these "laws" I speak when I speak of "the will of god."

For some reason, these meditations led me to muse over fragments remembered from MLK's speech in Memphis the night before he was murdered by the Feds.

I listened to it on YouTube. My god! I've never heard anything more chillingly prescient or so saturated with an absolutely implacable moral courage, more chock full of Jung, Platonic archetypes, and the eternal recurrence.

It is the last testimony of a true Kshatriya before he volunteers for the dissolution of his corporeal body in the inevitable and necessary ritual of the Killing of the King.

He saw the threats, he knew his fate. "But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do god's will."

I too want to do god's will but when I say that I don't mean it in the sense it is typically understood in the mainstream Abrahamic traditions. I don't mean submission to an anthropomorphized father figure, an erasure of free will and free choice. I mean the realization that they are some unalterable cosmic laws in effect and it is better to act in accordance with them than not.

And these laws are about to come down like a hammer.

The last T Square occurred during 1964-mid 1967. Let us examine a few of the most prominent political assassinations sponsored by the good ol' USA around then.

Malcolm X February 21, 1965

MLK April 4, 1968

RFK June 5, 1968

Fred Hampton December 4, 1969

Malcolm X came smack in the middle of the T Square but the more broadly impactful and socially traumatizing Saturnine murders, the ones that definitively killed the hope of the 1960s, came a year after. I'm expecting the most massive shock waves to have a similar time lag this time around as well.

"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." - MLK, Memphis, April 3, 1968

It's time to get right with god and find your path to courage.

Bangkok burning

2010-05-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

A killer photo-essay of the Thai military breaking up the red shirt encampment in Bangkok.

Russia Today video footage of same.

Collateral murder

2010-04-18T14:57:00.000-07:00

On April 5, 2010 WikiLeaks released a U.S. military video from 2007 that depicted the crew of an Apache helicopter gunship hosing down over a dozen people in New Baghdad with machine gun fire from on high - including two Reuters photographers.

From an "Apache" helicopter. The fire team was "Crazy Horse." Their base was "Gaia." Such a creepy reappropriation of names.

Over 1.3 million people have been killed by the Amerikkkan occupation forces since the invasion. Scenes like this (and far worse) are, tragically, commonplace.

These are Amerikkkan tax dollars at work, since over 50% of federal taxes go to the vicious and horrifying program of endless mass murder. If you pay for it, it's the same as if you put a .45 to the temple of an Iraqi five year old and pull the trigger yourself.

There was something about this video, however, that seems to have partially broken through the seemingly implacable imbecility of Amerikkkans and caused the video to go viral. As of this posting, it has over 6 million hits on You Tube. The few imperial subjects who are for peace, social justice and environmental sustainability can only hope this is the leading edge of a tipping point, and not just simply just more macabre war porn.

The permanent warfare state built by Amerikkka since World War II has in may ways reached its final "perfection." Few in the imperial heartland give a shit about its existence one way or the other, they keep paying for it, and most remain easily distracted by the essentials of life: beer, basic cable, cheap gas, and a steady stream of celebrity trivia.

What shocks me even more than the horrific nature of these cold-blooded murders from the safety of a distant chopper (where they need fear no physical retaliation) is that some of its participants seem to have grown a conscience.

Two veterans, one who pulled the two innocent, severely injured children from the obliterated van, one who was in the unit but not there on that day but who sees this as typical of what he participated in, have written a profound open letter of responsibility and reconciliation to those who got waxed in this engagement and the people of Iraq generally.

It has become a petition, with more veterans signing by the hour.

This warms my heart as it rips my soul. This gives me one last shred of hope that the contract killers of empire may finally be realizing that the endless war empire demands is monstrous and needs to be stopped immediately.

I do not support the troops, unless they resist immoral orders.

A few valiant souls have done so before now. Let us hope that the mass of troops finally grow the balls needed to join them - starting right now.

Texas Hip Hop Unity Coalition

2010-04-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

Jahsun Alamo and his studio. My original co-conspirator in creating the Texas Hip Hop Unity Coalition

An article I caught today on Truthout entitled "Texas Says Hip-Hop Has No Stand in History" by Tolu Olorunda got me to thinking and remembering.

I bet the people so quick to voice their condescending hatred of hip hop in the comments section didn't even read the article far enough to reach the author's' line: "the full swath and broad bath of hip-hop still remains unknown to most, especially those quick to mouth off about how bad and despicable and vile and endangering rap lyrics are."

Ironic isn’t it?

Judging by the title, I was thinking the article would delve into the history of hip hop in Texas. Instead, it focused on the shenanigans of those reactionary half-wits sitting on the Texas Board of "Education." This is all to the good, vital journalism, and a shame well worth exposing. Nevertheless, it jogged my own memory and reminded me of some Texas hip hop history I’d like to share with you.

In the late 1990s, I was one of the co-founders of the Texas Hip Hop Unity Coalition in the capitol city of Austin. Racially diverse, many of us had also made our way to the Lone Star State from numerous other parts of the country. We were going to quash the East Coast-West Coast beef and use the Third Coast to spearhead a positive alternative to the violence, misogyny and materialism of corporate hip hop. We were going to use the participation of the youth in a cultural form vital to them as a means of bettering their lives, their characters, and perhaps even their economic situations.

If Master P could create a multi-million dollar empire based on thug life in the Dirty South by the sheer force of his entrepreneurial spirit, so could we, and in the service of a social vision infinitely more positive than “flipping switches and smacking bitches.”

The Texas Hip Hop Unity Coalition only lasted a year or two. We got a small grant from the city of Austin. We put on a 7 hour hip hop show of performers from around the state one hot summer day in a park in black and brown east Austin. We offered seminars in the four elements of hip hop to local youth.

We had ambitious plans. We wanted to start a youth center, open a studio, offer four elements job training, you name it. We were vision casting, but also making it real. We held our meetings in a dilapidated old warehouse we shared with a youth boxing club in east Austin. This would be our site, if only we could make it work.

Before long, our needs to make a living and other elements of Real Life caused the coalition to dissolve, a story not uncommon to struggling non-profit start-ups.

This aspect of hip hop culture, sometimes called "conscious," is positive, often politically engaged, and tends to epitomize the DIY spirit of grassroots culture.

As Chuck D so famously said: “hip hop is the black CNN.” It surely is that but it is also so much more.

Hip hop is for all the races and all nations and can be as spiritual, philosophical, and artistic as it is descriptive of current events. This strand has been a part of the culture since the beginning and it never left. True, it is not typically commercially prominent but it has always been there for those with eyes to see and those with hearts to seek it out.

Those unaware of its existence don't know hip hop very well and are making simplistic judgments based on a limited understanding of a powerful and diverse cultural tradition they haven’t taken the time to discover in all of its richness.

A few years ago, traveling in southeast Asia, I happened upon an informal hip hop street jam in Kuala Lumpur by sheer serendipity. It came to life spontaneously every evening on a particular street corner around 10pm, and went on and on until about 3am.

It had no “leaders” or conscious “organization” and yet it thrived each night the week I was there. The vibe was peaceful, friendly, encouraging, and mutually supportive. Your status didn’t have to be the baddest, you just had to contribute whatever you felt like contributing. Every sincere effort was welcome and applauded.

When I joined the cipher, we battled in Malaysian, Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, and English in accents from around the globe. We may not have always understood what the other was saying but we knew who won each round, by the general acclamation of the crowd of hundreds, densely packed all around us.

Some nights I emerged victorious. Some nights I got my ass handed to me on a plate. But “victor” and “vanquished” could smile at each, shake hands for a job well done, and keep on rhyming shoulder to shoulder late into the night, comrades, in love with this artistic form and the outlet of expression it provided.

Black CNN? This was more like the United Nations of art.

More exhilarating than “winning” a night in the cypher were the thoughts that raced through my mind uncontrollably as I sauntered back to my hostel in the wee hours of the morning, smiling.

“My god, we’ve done it. From the block parties of the south Bronx in the 1970s, each of us contributing in our own way, we’ve created the single most universal cultural force for the youth on the planet today."

Everywhere you go in the world, people know and love hip hop. In international crossroad cities where the world comes to them, like Kuala Lumpur, people know and love hip hop.

The principles that inspired us in our work creating the Texas Hip Hop Unity Coalition continue to inspire others and I guess that’s our greatest legacy. A humble one but, godammit, we added our light to the sun of light and kept it shining.

We are about to enter some very strange times that will challenge us in some very strange ways. Hip hop will be there and will rise to the occasion. The greatest days of hip hop as a tool for spiritual and political uplift remain ahead of us.

Big ups to Jahsun Alamo, my original visionary co-conspirator, big ups to Hip Hop Mecca for making the park jam and seminars happen, big ups to Mad Gods (and the 808 connection), big ups to all the people who kept meeting in that boxing gym with the ceiling falling down around all us.

The dream will rise again. Of that I have no doubt.

Cool "deep politics" internet radio shows

2010-04-03T21:51:00.001-07:00

I just encountered a bunch of really cool podcasts and internet radio shows on deep politics.

They hosts and approaches aren't partisan. Of course not. No partisan ever comes anywhere near the nonpartisan reality of this murky realm.

The podcasts are long interviews with whistle blowers, investigative journalists, academics, and an interesting variety of people, with extensive and fascinating knowledge on topics the MSM never goes anywhere near.

If you listen to 20-30 of these shows, you'll have a solid grasp of the basics of the deep state, the shadow government, conspiracy theory, the national security state, whatever you want to call it.

As I discovered each of them, I listened to one or two of them and then just downloaded them by the bushel.

Boiling Frogs Post

The hottest whistle blower in America, Sibel Edmonds, and veteran radio personality, Peter B. Collins.

The Peter B. Collins Show

Similar themes and guests as Boiling Frogs, but him flying solo.

The Expert Witness Radio Show

By Michael Levine, a great DEA whistle blower and author.

Jesse Ventura talking about his new book with Alex Jones

Jones is both on it and a bit of a careerist blowhard but the long interview with Ventura is awesome.

This is alternative audio media at its finest.

Lightness, now more than ever

2010-03-31T17:40:00.000-07:00

Henri Cartier-Bresson

In this time of gasping fear, intractable rage, and ineffable sadness, it is worth remembering one thing:

"Were I to choose an auspicious image for the new millennium, I would choose the sudden agile leap of the poet-philosopher who raises himself above the weight of the world, showing that with all his gravity he still has the secret of lightness, proof he knows that what many consider to be the vitality of the times actually belongs to the realm of death." - Italo Calvino Six Memos for the Next Millennium

Dig.

American culture

2010-03-26T00:13:00.000-07:00

America may be a blood soaked empire but it has also created visionary artists who could have only been created in America.

Townes Van Zandt is one such ferocious talent. Here is a great documentary "Be Here to Love Me" on Hulu.

Iran still a target?

2010-03-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

The war pigs of Israel and the United States have been clamoring to bomb Iran for many years now. Apparently it's still a target.

195 smart bombs and 192 massive bunker buster bombs are being shipped to America's military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

"They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran," said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran. "US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours," he added.

It never had anything to do with Iran's nuclear program. It has everything to do with securing alternative pipeline routes for oil and natural gas from the Caspian Basin to the sea, removing a key player in a new power bloc emerging against Amerikkka, and controlling China's access to energy.

A lot of observers are anticipating a false flag terror attack orchestrated by Israel to provide the casus belli for war, with Usrael to lead an air attacks right over.

Long standing Catholic kiddie fiddling horror show finally coming to a head

2010-03-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

Doesn't he look like someone you cant trust?

"It is like a tsunami." - Elke Huemmeler, member of the Vatican's Task Force on Sexual Abuse Prevention

"During four decades of reporting from the Vatican, I have never seen a graver crisis affecting the very credibility of the leadership of the world's longest surviving international organisation, the Roman Catholic Church." - BBC's David Willey

You can bet this story will have legs. Serious legs.

Fading fast

2010-02-28T13:12:00.000-08:00

Actually, hope isn't fading fast for me with Obama, since I never had any. The few remaining kool aid drinking liberals will have to polish yet another set of rationalizations to maintain their support for him now that he "has signed a one-year extension of the Patriot Act." The cognitive dissonance these people are straining under must be enormous.

I wonder what kinds of monstrosities are in the classified version of the reauthorization? I suspect they are doubleplus ungood.

Liberia

2010-02-12T12:34:00.001-08:00

Another lion down

2010-02-02T21:07:00.000-08:00

Howard Zinn, hero of humanity, RIP

"My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way that our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you."

Go read the rest of this 2005 Spelman College commencement speech at the Rag Blog.

While some may call me a pessimist or a cynic, I wonder, why do I choke up when I read these words?

Because deep within our souls, even ravaged as they are by the so-called free market which reduces every noble aspiration to the status of commodity and by the permanent warfare state which soaks our lives in the blood of a million innocents, there is a spirit which refuses to linger long in hatred, refuses to be misled by accolades and money - in the end refuses, simply, to die.

It does not die when this mortal coil is cast aside. Towards every torch of a hero dropped, 10,000 run.

In the end we will win because we have to.

Towards a Theory of Conspiracy Theories

2010-01-27T18:03:00.000-08:00

Cass Sunstein, confidante of Obama, Harvard Law professor, current head of the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, potential Supreme Court nominee - and the latest crusader against those dastardly conspiracy theories

Recently, there was quite a hullabaloo in the blogosphere over a reprehensible academic paper Sunstein co-wrote in 2008 (available for download here), which argued for a Cointellpro-type program of government infiltration of conspiracy theorists, online and in person. Given the incredible scope and flexibility of the powers of his office, as enunciated in this September 30, 1993 executive order signed by Clinton, his proposal should certainly give us pause.

His paper, "Conspiracy Theories," was originally scooped by Marc Estrin at Rag Blog, and covered in short order by Daniel Tencer at The Raw Story and Glenn Greenwald at Salon and pretty much went viral from there. Although Greenwald's piece was the most extensive, none of the reports really examined the paper in great detail.

I took the time to read the whole thing. I've also read the entire academic literature on conspiracy theory and written one of my masters theses on the topic at a Division I research university. If I have the stomach for it, I may offer a more detailed analysis of Sunstein's paper in a future post, but for now I'd like to offer something else.

More important than a detailed analysis of a single essay would be a sustained theoretical critique of the role of "conspiracy theory" in delegitimizing information contrary to the interests and consensus reality of the elite. None of the coverage of Sunstein's journal article offered this broader view. I would like to do so, by posting a revised version of something I posted here a few years back which, unfortunately, remains as timely as ever.

Contemporary America is of two minds regarding conspiracy theory - or "conspiranoia" as I like to call it, a term combining conspiracy and paranoia which I got from a book by Devon Jackson of the same name.

On one hand, it has become the default popular view, one of commodified skepticism towards history and government. It's a sentiment that has proliferated extensively since the 1960s, Watergate, and the Church Committee. With the collapse of the reassuring dualities of the Cold War in the early 1990s, it has culminated into an extremely pervasive apocalyptic teleology. It has become one of the leading intellectual leitmotifs of our time.

On the other hand, the disavowal of conspiranoia has also become an integral part of the conventional wisdom itself, a social technology of control that establishes the boundaries of "responsible discourse" by reflecting elite consensus on the fundamental nature of social reality, in accordance with the elite's own class interests. This makes for an incredibly effective means of establishing ruling class hegemony by controlling dissent, foreclosing alternatives, engineering support, and transmuting the interests of the ruling class into that of the nation as a whole.

As Gore Vidal once said "The way our ruling class keeps out of sight is one of the greatest stunts in the political history of any country" and conspiracy theory is one of their most potent methodologies.

In fact, one is apt to be labeled a conspiracy theorist for merely suggesting that there is a ruling class in this country that seeks to maintain hegemony, to say nothing of the idea that the ruling class might occasionally use conspiratorial methods. Rather than conspiracy theory, most media and intellectual gatekeepers prefer to view elite behavior through the lens of "somnambulist theory," "coincidence theory", "incompetence theory", or "spontaneity theory". No amount of intellectual gymnastics is spared to avoid arriving at the conclusion that the rich and powerful, like the rest of us, might possibly act in support of their own perceived best interests. This is, of course, in spite of a voluminous sociological literature on the power elite and "elite deviance" and a plethora of laws on the books against criminal conspiracy.

True freedom of mind - presumably the bedrock of the informed consent of the governed in a democracy - requires not only the negative absence of constraint but the positive presence of other alternatives. Even though the rich and powerful have repeatedly used conspiracy to get richer and more powerful, to mention this sociological fact immediately draws the most vicious criticism, including charges of conspiracy mongering, and many variations on superstition, cynicism, paranoia, hysteria, and primitivism.

Conspiranoia can and should be a tool of empirical explanation. It is possible to point fingers and name names. The powers that be, perhaps as few as thousands of people enslaving as many as six billion, act not in conspiracy but in tacit collusion fostered by the similarity of their backgrounds, calibrated at key forums and through key organizations in support of a global agenda of domination, economic plunder, and environmental devastation.

Ultimately, however, the appeal of conspiranoia is that of narrative itself: it's ability to explain, predict, motivate, and entertain. Although conspiranoia offers the aficionado an integrated worldview, a weltanschauung, it also provides more than that. When confronted with the potential evidence of conspiracy, one must ask, as in criminal trials: "Is there motive, means, and opportunity?" All too often there is, especially at the intersection of politics, law, high finance, intelligence, diplomacy, covert military operations, narco-trafficking, organized crime, and the media simulacrasphere.

Instead of the usual characterization of conspiracy theory as a branch of group psychopathology, "troubled minds looking for order in chaotic and rapidly changing times" as the academic literature so uniformly spins it, conspiranoia might be better and more accurately thought of as a populist fusion of life writing, historiography, and political science which provides explanatory narratives that void the epistemic warrant of the elite consensus on history, social reality, and the "conventional wisdom." This is a major development in the long tradition of popular resistance to state power and economic oligarchy, not of the right vs. left, but of the bottom vs. the top.

At its best, conspiranoia is a radical exercise of the skepticism and critical reason at the heart of the Enlightenment project. In this sense it represents a last-ditch effort by the supposed repositories of popular sovereignty - the people - to save liberal humanism and the Enlightenment from its demented doppelganger - the program of perpetual war for perpetual peace and the enslavement of the autonomous bourgeois subject under regimes of panoptic control managed by technocrats serving the super rich, using the powerful tools of the nation-state as they've evolved since the Peace of Westphalia in the 17th century.

Conspiranoia narratives could be empirical explanations of social reality, since it can easily be argued that, as Carl Oglesby put it in The Yankee and Cowboy War, "conspiracy is the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means...and where there is no limit to power, there is no limit to conspiracy." The knee-jerk denigration of such attitudes by the media and the academy, however, demonstrates that their disavowal has become a vital social technology of control in the late modern age.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, virtually all pre-capitalist and anti-capitalist systems have been colonized by "global monetocracy", a transnational corporate socialism that socializes the costs and privatizes the profits. This is kleptocracy by any other name, albeit a far more sophisticated version than that practiced by hacks like Marcos, Duvalier, Mobutu, and their ilk.

Although seemingly at its moment of universal triumph, this system may in fact be teetering on the brink of economic, political, social, and environmental collapse. This collapse may even already be underway. It seems likely usher in an extremely reactionary, corporate-managed pseudo-populism and overt police state fascism in all of the core states of global capitalism - perhaps even a hybrid of revolution and civil war.

It is precisely the dramatically escalating accumulation of these fundamental contradictions within the global capitalist system that "coincidence theorists" try to deflect public attention away from with their hysterical vilification of conspiracy theories. Their relentless disparagement continues even though, ala Occam's Razor, conspiracy theories often provide the simplest, most rational explanation for much of history and current events.

The power elite deliberately obscure the structural limitations on free will (that they themselves largely created) to mask the sad fact that, as human civilization has evolved from slavery to feudalism to democracy, we have traded kings and tsars for presidents and prime ministers but the money power behind the scenes has remained the same. The king, the theocrat, and the money changers have conceded just enough to stave off revolution, and these small victories have only been won by long and arduous struggle.

Their regime of capital accumulation can only survive by feeding off the subject body and stupefying the subject mind with the myth of individual agency and the "society of the spectacle" while simultaneously doing everything in their power to ensure that this alleged agency can't be used in any meaningful way. In such an environment, denigrating conspiranoia becomes a means of cordoning off from the masses the fact that they are being lied to every day of their lives by the very authority figures they trust to give them the "good life," and that the consumerist hydrocarbon-based industrial civilization they live in is arguably psychopathic and quite possibly in terminal decline.

While the provisional government of politicians does the lying, they do so in the service of a permanent government above and behind political power, a secular oligarchy working in tacit collusion. In America they are the great commercial dynasties, the Fortune 500 companies and their lobbyists, the media simulacrasphere, the civil and military services, the large research universities, law firms, charitable foundations, and their ilk.

They hire the politicians and frame the boundaries of the politicians' agenda - even the boundaries of "reasonable" political discourse itself. They authorize the production of regular election pageants to protect the brand name of American democracy. They convince a large enough portion of the general population that the system still works, so that the machinery of oppression, theft, enslavement, murder, and incarceration can continue without interruption.

This oligarchy makes effective use of such groups and forums as the Bilderberg Group, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Economic Forum at Davos, Bank of International Settlements, World Trade Organization, Council of Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bohemian Grove, Group of Eight, Trans-Atlantic Business Council, and other organizations to calibrate their rhetoric, achieve consensus, and even set policy superceding that of sovereign governments. This isn't done in singular smoky star chambers, as the straw man argument against conspiracy theories routinely and condescendingly jokes.

Instead, there are many camps within this oligarchy. Sometimes they compete, sometimes they cooperate, but all are unified by a miasmic group-think that stems from the similarity of their backgrounds, class interests, and institutional positions, and their sensitivity to the behavioral cues given off by the institutional structures within which they seek to advance. Pursuing a misguided sense of their own self interest, they pursue the interests of the global "capitalist" system as well.

As the key nations of transnational corporate imperialism degenerate into police states, they slowly strip citizens of their rights by periodically manufacturing crises to enact the Hegelian dialectic of "crisis-response-resolution," with each new "resolution" bringing them greater control and pushing the world's resources into what George H.W. Bush has called "higher, tighter, and righter hands."

Although conspiranoiacs exist in great variety, many share a belief in the rough outline of this dystopian nightmare. If true, it is the truth which cannot be spoken. For that reason, the media and academic gatekeepers of "credible" information will continue to dismiss anything that challenges the conventional wisdom as a "conspiracy theory" until some catalyst finally reveals enough of the horrible truth to enough people, facilitating a paradigm shift of world historical importance, a tipping point, the 100th monkey effect.

The ills of society can neither be ameliorated nor even adequately described by means of the law alone. Nevertheless, progressive efforts to ameliorate these ills cannot succeed without committed work in the legal field. However, such work will be necessarily defensive in posture until such time as substantial extraparliamentary pressure is brought to bear on the system by means of "either grassroots citizen participation in credible progressive projects or rebellious acts of desperation that threaten the social order," as one of America's greatest public intellectuals, Cornel West, put it.

With adequate reach into a broad enough segment of the general population by leaking past the media oligarchy, and armed with adequate credibility by weeding itself of the pervasive disinformation that so often taints it, conspiranoiac analysis has the potential to precipitate and consolidate a very significant portion of that extraparliamentary pressure of which West speaks.

I believe it was the inimitable psychonaut philosopher Terence Mckenna who said "Like it or not, the people of the fringe are in an apocalyptical struggle: either the elite techniques of control will be perfected to the level where dissent can be abolished, or heretics will mutate to some level of consciousness where they can do holy and miraculous works to resurrect the old dream of freedom for all."

Although this may seem a millennial hope, it may also be a cogent empirical analysis of a decisive historical crossroads, and certainly a large number of us have our eyes on December 21, 2012. In any event, until our individual consciousness (and our collective unconscious) is liberated, and we can finally establish abiding regimes of peace, social justice, and sustainability, as Rousseau said "Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains."

Very creepy fascist National Guard recruitment ad

2010-01-05T12:53:00.000-08:00

War porn straight out of the Nazi playbook. You'd think it's a parody but it's not. As Vaulty says: "The 'Kwa is a doomed nation."

Well, well, well

2009-12-23T16:37:00.001-08:00

"With key sections of the U.S. Patriot Act set to expire Dec. 31, the Obama administration - essentially tiptoeing through the corridors of Congress and using the raucous health care debate as cover - has quietly maneuvered for renewal of the controversial provisions, which he opposed as a senator."

Well, well, well.

"Winchester Ammunition was recently awarded a contract by the Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security to supply a maximum of 200 million 40 cal. rounds over the next five years."

Well, well, well.

A new hope

2009-12-19T12:03:00.000-08:00

A few of us had Obama's number the whole time. By now it should be patently obvious to everyone that it's a case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." He's a stooge for military imperialism, zionism, and Wall Street, pure and simple. It's what you do if you want to be appointed nominal head of the empire.

I used to have the faintest of faint hopes that he might bring 30 or 40 of the Bush administration officials to the Hague. Of course that didn't happen. What a shocker.

But what is starting to shock me is the incredible tenacity with which he is not merely continuing Bush's policies but even intensifying them.

Each example is more nauseating than the last, and they've been coming in such an incessant flurry since his inauguration that I've kind of stopped caring. Good old outrage fatigue. But two in particular recently have just been too over the top, and need broader dissemination.

One relates to John Yoo, one of the Bush administration's most notorious legal defenders of torture. Progressives want him in jail, or at least fired from U.C. Berkeley's Boalt Hall law school and disbarred. Instead, Obama just filed a brief asking for a pending case against him to be thrown out. "Yoo should not be held accountable for his actions as it would have a chilling effect on advice provided to future presidents." Etc etc blah blah blah. Off scott-free, with a lovely, prestigious sinecure.

That's irritating and vile. The other example, however, beggars description. OK, so we lost Habeus Corpus, most of the Bill of Rights and the constitution, and many of the major cornerstones of 1,000 years of Anglo-American jurisprudence under Bush.

So what does this much-vaunted "brilliant constitutional lawyer" do? Doubles down on the fascism.

He urged the Supreme Court not to hear a case brought against the administration by Gitmo inmates. The court agreed. This let stand a lower court ruling that "suspected enemy combatants," as determined by the President, are not humans and therefore have no legal standing to seek any type of redress through law!

Many commentators noticed the harrowing parallels between this decision and Dred Scott of 1857, which essentially legalized and consolidated slavery in Amerikkkan jurisprudence.

I'd say: unbelievable! But, of course, it's very believable.

And so it goes, with Amerikkka's unimpeded free fall into the abyss.

Oh yeah, and the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner just killed 120 people in a cruise missile attack on Yemen, significantly widening the theater of the War on an Abstract Noun (terror).

Quotes for freedom - and survival

2009-11-15T13:52:00.000-08:00

It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it (Henry, 1775, ¶ 2).

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? (Henry, 1775, ¶ 5).

Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man (Paine, 1776, ¶ 11).

There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both (Paine, 1776, ¶ 12).

Bill Hicks' mission was to “expose lies, challenge mediocrity, and force people to think for themselves” (Schatzberg, 2003).

The reason the world is so fucked up is because we’re undergoing evolution. And the reasons our institutions, our traditional religions are all crumbling is because they’re no longer relevant. They’re no longer relevant. So it’s time to create a new philosophy and perhaps even a new religion you and that’s ok cause that’s our right because we are free children of God with minds who can imagine anything and that’s kind of our role. (Hicks, 1997)

Time evolves and comes to a place where it renews again. There is first a purification time, then there is renewal time. We are getting very close to this time now. We were told we would see America come and go. In a sense America is dying from within because they forgot the instructions on how to live on earth. Everything is coming to a time where prophecy and man’s inability to live on earth in a spiritual way will come to a crossroad of great problems. It’s the Hopi belief, it’s our belief, that if you’re not spiritually connected to the earth and understand the spiritual reality of how to live on earth, it’s likely you will not make it. (Native American Prophecy, Elders Speak part 1).

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds. - Bob Marley, 1980

We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind. - Marcus Garvey, 1938

Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them (Buddha, Kalama Sutra).

Bill Hicks, outlaw comic

2009-11-15T12:55:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest of all modern prophets

Murdered? Possibly. Watch all 7 segments and hear that rarest of all commodities - the truth.

(It's funny too.)

Snapshots of the Kwa (Amerikkka)

2009-11-12T15:32:00.001-08:00

Derivatives - the meltdown to come

2009-10-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

(Big ups to Washington's Blog for bird-dogging this issue all month and inspiring this post.)

OK, who wants to publish my book on financial derivatives?

When the legendary investor Warren Buffet, the “oracle of Omaha,” so famously called derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction” in a 2002 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, the total global market in them was approximately $141 trillion. In the few short years since then, that market has exploded to $591 trillion in December 2008. These instruments are so opaque and so difficult to understand (even to those who package and sell them) and so difficult to value that no one is really sure what they might actually sell for – or if they could even sell at all. The question that has so many analysts so concerned is how a global economy of approximately $50 trillion per year would react to a rapid, uncontrolled implosion of the unregulated $600 trillion derivatives market.

Many economists (including several Nobel Prize winners) think such a meltdown could create a global economic crisis many times worse than the one we are experiencing today. Some have even called derivatives the bomb and our current economic woes merely the fuse. Some fear the explosion may be imminent.

For example, China, lately such an influential player in international capital markets, sitting on more than $2 trillion in foreign exchange, has hinted at a willingness to default on derivative losses. Needless to say, this has sent chills throughout the investment banking world.

In a nutshell, even though the derivative market is so massive, so dangerous, and so poorly understood, for some inexplicable reason, it is still almost completely virgin territory in the mass market book world.

Sure, there are a number of books on the market about them, but they are essentially technical manuals aimed at investment professionals. One book, “Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives” by Satyajit Das, comes closest to what I have in mind but it is different from my idea in two important respects.

First, it was written in 2006 and a lot has changed since then. The market has increased by hundreds of trillions of dollars and gotten even more dangerous! There is also derivatives legislation under consideration now on Capitol Hill; that and other similar news since then must be discussed. Second, it’s reviewed as “part thriller, part expose,” which is not the approach I’d like to take. That approach seems to do for derivatives what “Happy Hour Is for Amateurs” by the Philadelphia Lawyer did for the legal profession, “Damn, it Feels Good to Be a Banker” by Leveraged Sellout did for investment banking, and “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins did for international development financiers.

I’ve read all of those and they’re cracking good reads but far heavier on first person narratives of men behaving badly than on straight up information. The approach I have in mind is much more like “Bad Money” by Kevin Phillips but focusing exclusively on derivatives, their history, their nature, and their danger.

“Bad Money” struck just the right balance: it made a wide variety of complicated economic topics easily understood in a manner that was lively, engaging, and thought-provoking, and it came in at just the right length for that kind of book, around 250 pages.

Its timing was absolutely impeccable. The Viking Adult hardcover came out on April 15, 2008, just months before the September 15, 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers started this whole mess we’re in now, and it basically explained and predicted everything that was going to happen and is still happening today. So, of course, it did great business and became a New York Times best seller.

Considering that so many pundits see an economic disaster coming soon that could be many multiples worse than what we are experiencing now – and that it may be caused in large part by derivatives - I find it completely unfathomable there isn’t a “Bad Derivatives” out there already. Hell, I’d buy one. Whoever is first to market with a book like has the potential to move a lot of copies – and do a great public service. Imagine the ad slogan if it gets to paperback: “The book that explains the collapse of the global economy.” Whoa!

How many times in a career does a writer, editor, or agent have a chance to be associated with a book that heavy? Usually, not that often.

Since timing is everything, this is one that whoever picks it up might want to consider crash publishing it because this crisis could come in five years, five months – or five weeks. I can tell you with 100% confidence that anyone who says the economy is recovering is either incredibly stupid or a professional liar. Something’s coming and it’s going to be massive. The only question is when.

Gangland war brewing among the elites regarding attack on Iran?

2009-09-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

Zbiggy is not down

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Kissinger of the "left" and founding father of Al Qaeda, recently said Amerikkka should shoot down Israeli planes that try to cross Iraqi airspace to bomb Iran.

"Q: How aggressive can Obama be in insisting to the Israelis that a military strike might be in America’s worst interest?"

A: We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?

Q: What if they fly over anyway?

A: Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse."

"Liberty in reverse" is a reference to when an NSA ship the USS Liberty got blown to pieces by the Israeli air force during the 1968 Arab-Israeli war, for which they suffered precisely no ramifications from LBJ. in fact Senator McCain's dad was a big shot admiral then and instrumental in the cover up.

For Zbiggy to bring up the taboo subject of the USS Liberty and even suggest shooting down "allied" planes is remarkable. In fact he also testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1, 2007 there might be a false flag terror incident to drag Amerikkka into war against Iran. Par for the course in the deep state, but remarkably candid. And who was on the committee at that time? Obama, Biden, and Hillary, all declared candidates by then. And what did they say about his remarkable assertion? Fuck all. not a peep.

Russia is sending the S-300 "one of the most advanced multi-target anti-aircraft missile systems in the world" with "a reported ability to track up to 100 targets simultaneously while engaging up to 12 at the same time. It has a range of about 200 km and can hit targets at altitudes of 90,000 feet."

Israel is making noise they need to attack Iran before they get it. Of course, as usual, they are sending out a lot of mixed messages on the possible attack.

Russia already gave Iran sunburn shore to ship missiles.

"The Sunburn can deliver a 200-kiloton nuclear payload, or: a 750-pound conventional warhead, within a range of 100 miles, more than twice the range of the Exocet. The Sunburn combines a Mach 2.1 speed (two times the speed of sound) with a flight pattern that hugs the deck and includes "violent end maneuvers" to elude enemy defenses. The missile was specifically designed to defeat the US Aegis radar defense system."

They could easily neutralize any US carrier groups in coastal waters and effectively close the Strait of Hormuz. In a worst case scenario, this could be part of a number of moves that would effectively trap all US troops in Iraq like spam in a can with no supply lines. It would be every unit for themselves fighting their way out through Turkey.

I think the Zbiggy-Brent Scowcroft-Council on Foreign Relations-"pragmatic realist" corporate fascist wing is at loggerheads with the AIPAC-neocon lunatics. The former think there's a very real chance a Usreali attack on Iran at best could destroy America and Israel and at worst maybe even start WW III. The latter are so bat shit crazy from arrogance they can't even see their own obvious interests in self preservation.

I think Obama's instinctual inclination would be to side with the "pragmatic realist" fascists, even though he's got so many hardcore ZOGers in his administration. He is even known to listen to the counsel of Zbiggy as an "elder statesman" (read: "unindicted war criminal").

Unfortunately, Obama has gotten where he is today by accommodating elite power. What will he do now faced with two almost equally powerful elite factions that want contradictory goals? I doubt even he knows for sure at this point and will likely let himself be swept along by whatever the MSM tells him to do.

If Israel pops off a few suitcase nukes in Amerikkkan cities and the MSM goes into hyperdrive blaming Iran via Hezballah and Hamas, the I shudder to think what Obama might feel "compelled" to do.

Multilateral international "talks" start October 1. Obama, Sarkozy and Gordon Brown are all huffing and puffing. China and Russia, however, aren't having it. They will veto any attempt at UN sanctions.

Wars are often genned up to distract people from domestic problems. This one has the potential to cause the Amerikkkan empire to implode. Needless to say, this would exacerbate domestic problems just a touch.

Tenacious cult is the proverbial Hundredth Monkey

2009-09-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

A friend and I are trying to start a new religion, which we've named "tenacious cult." Partially because we want it to stand tenaciously against the insipid lies that keep us all enslaved, partially because we want it to have the disciplined cohesion of a cult, partially because we like Tenacious D and it just sounds funny.

But it is real and applications are being accepted at the business office.

He's a Hare Krishna-Platonist philosopher and I'm a Buddhist-mystic vagabond but we meet in the vastness of the Vedas, the "perennial philosophy," quantum physics, Nietzsche, and Jung, where we actually have quite a bit in common . Naturally, tenacious cult has a political dimension as well. Not in the sordid pointless realm of activism and elective politics but in the more practical sense of "how can we organize society to help us live up to our potential as the universe knowing itself and serve as good stewards of our fragile little space ship?" Now, seemingly hovering at - or even slightly past - some tipping point leading to universal destruction or universal liberation, or both at the same time, the task seems especially urgent. He recently mused:

"What would a quantum declaration of Independence sound like, one that wants to unite the extremes of the left and the right? That is what the tenacious cult has to pull off. The Tea parties are just beginning."

He then proposed a preamble:

"We hold these fictions to be necessary for self-preservation, that the cosmos is the mind of God, and that we live in the subconscious aspect of it, as fractal parts and parcels. Life is consciousness, which is atomic by nature, inconceivably simultaneously a particle of individual consciousness, and a wave of impersonal collective unconsciousness. Liberty is freedom to live and seek happiness, provided it does not impinge on other people's liberty to pursue life and happiness. True liberty is freedom from the misconsceptions of self which doom our pursuit of happiness. In as much as our consciosness is collective by nature, it is the duty of the collective consciousness, manifest practically as the government, to provide each soul with the inherited knowledge of humanity, focusing first and foremost on the definition of self, understood as the atomic part and parcel of a fiction necessary for self-preservation. Fiction being the definition of God as that which is described by the devotee."

I am ambivalent about constitutionality. One American anarchist, Benjamin Tucker, argued that constitutions are only binding upon the parties that agreed to them and subsequent generations are not. Technically, legally, I agree but at their best they can be a useful fiction, a kind of charter, a set of general ground rules that aren't a bad way to organize a society. Take the American constitution for example. Sure, it was written to justify and maintain slavery. Sure, it was a power grab from the states to facilitate rule by the bourgeois elite. Sure, the Whiskey Insurrection of 1791, just four years after the constitution was ratified, made it abundantly clear that the revolution just traded one set of corrupt elite for another and the people were fucked.

But if you ignore all of that reality and just focus on what it says, it's not all bad. Of course, it goes without saying that every fundamental right it elucidates has been obliterated by reaganbushclintonbush. The savior of the deluded Kool Aid drinking left, a one Mr. Barry Soetero, has not done one iota to repair the damage done and has even compounded it.

In practice, constitutions just provide a cover story that allows "liberal democratic nation-states" to go on doing what they've always done: serving rich and powerful scumbags and implementing their endless program of mass murder, grand theft larceny, quasi-enslavement, trauma based mind control, and inter-dimensional tomfoolery.

I often wonder why such guiding principles as can be found in constitutions even need to be written in the first place. Isn't it a bit like "share your toys" or "follow the golden rule" or "don't run with scissors?" They don't need to be written, they need to be lived. The Amish have their Ordnung, which is oral, customary, and uniquely tailored and tweaked by each community. I think the spiritual anarchist bio-regional self-governments to come after the fall of the nation-state will follow a model closer to that then constitutions.

But constitutional language does occasionally have the sweeping eloquence and ferocious moral outrage of the judeo-christian-islamic prophetical tradition, and no one enjoys a good jeremiad more than I.

I heard there were 2 million tea baggers in DC the other weekend, that it was the biggest thing in DC ever. While I find most of their concerns completely asinine and ass-backwards (and their arguments against affordable health care make me want to play "the flight of the bumblebee" with a claw hammer on my skull), I totally agree with their visceral outrage that "something rotten in the state of Denmark smells."

During the last election pageant, I sometimes told people was for McCain because I thought he would bring the Amerikkkan empire to its knees quicker than Obama or Billary. (Actually I was for Kucinich or Paul but only for sport). People would laugh nervously and assume I was joking but in a way I wasn't. Who better than a warmongering nut "crazy uncle" to drive a stake through the heart of empire?

Of course, I knew Obama would be fine too, as a patently obvious tool for the insanely self-destructive impulses of military imperialism, corporate rule, and ZOG. As it turns out, I was wrong. Obama is even better! There's no way McCain and Palin (dear God, Palin; what a painfully tragi-comic joke she is on every conceivable level) would have completely unhinged the nutcase right that way Obama has. To be fair to the well-spoken whore of Babylon presently occupying the oval office, if the nutcase right had functioning mammalian brains capable of critical reason, they'd realize their arguments don't make any fucking sense. They might still hate him, but then it would be for the right reasons.

In any event, they represent millions upon millions of people and they seem like they are fucking pissed and getting on their last nerve. Of course, anybody with half a brain and decent observational skills saw through Obama from the get go. Now even thick-headed "liberals" are realizing they've been totally had and they've been served a big steaming pile of Bush Light.

All the fascism and twice the charisma!

Here's what's great about Obama: he might wind up uniting the outrage of the "far right" and the "far left" in a way that McCain never could have. Initially they may unite simply because of their common outrage but before too long they will want to understand the latent, truer, deeper reasons for their unity.

Here's where tenacious cult comes in. We won't unite these two factions as activists on the physical plane but we may manifest the ideology, theology and symbolism of their unity at precisely the moment they are ready to absorb it. In this way, tenacious cult is the proverbial Hundredth Monkey.

"Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of individuals knows a 'new way', it remains the conscious property of those individuals. However, when one more individual manifests this new awareness, the field is strengthened, a critical mass is reached, and the awareness becomes the conscious property of all. This new awareness is communicated mind to mind." - The Hundredth Monkey by Ken Keyes Jr.

Better stay inside

2009-08-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

In a supposed democracy supposedly dependent upon an informed citizentry, what are the prospects for that supposed democracy when the evidence continues to mount that Amerikkkans are piss ignorant morons? For example, the annual ACT results are in and they are as dismal as ever. Only 23% were judged ready to succeed in college and the definition of "success" is a pretty low bar: a 75% chance or better to get a C in entry-level college courses.

"About 1.48 million of the 3.3 million members of the high school class of 2009 took the ACT." I can only imagine that most of those who didn't take it, who probably don't intend to go to college (remember, I think only about 25% of Amerikkkans have a bachelors degree), are probably even dumber.

As the delightful author Chris Hedges' new book argues, Amerikkka has indeed became a nation in which print-based critical rationality has essentially been lost.

This enables all kinds of mischief because even though the people are many and the psychopathic evil-doers few, the people don't have the remotest idea what kind of vileness is going on and absolutely no curiosity to find out.

For example, shouldn't dozens of Bush administration officials already be at the Hague?! Someone was even thoughtful enough to compile a list of 50.

Of course, those are virtually all former public officials. I'm sure we could easily make a list as long or longer of unindicted criminals from the private sector from that period.

But - alas - St. Obama has already said we need to "look forward, not back" - back at two wars of choice, a million dead Iraqis, a decimated constitution, and the foundations for a police state laid. Which makes him an accessory after the fact to war crimes, a hypocritical opportunist scumbag, and watchman to the decimation of the last vestigal ideals of American democracy. And in spite of the fact that "revelations of incompetence and sadistic fantasy...because of the Bush administration’s infatuation with torture" continue flowing hot and heavy.

They're even outsourcing their state-sponsored terrorism by hiring Blackwater mercenaries to run many of the kidnapping and torture flights

Hell, Ridge even admitted what everybody with half-a-brain already suspected: that he was pressured to raise the terror alerts for political reasons.

In doesn't just gut America's former ideals and its its economy, it is poised to obliterate its middle and working classes as well.

Even though people like Warren Buffet are warning this could lead to hyperinflation and the Kwa becoming a "banana republic" and noted trend forecaster Gerald Celente has been getting a lot of publicity for his wonderful phrase, the Bailout Bubble, essentially the idea that all of this $12-24 trillion in corporate welfare (aka "the bailout") - the recipients of which Amerikkkans aren't allowed to know - on top of the already enormous federal deficit is not only going to bankrupt the Kwa but bring down the entire "free market" system with it.

The Chinese see it plainly enough and are taking the preliminary steps of an orderly withdrawal out of the dollar.

Wonder if they'll finally get to audit the Fed for the first time in its 98 year existence before the ultimate implosion? Ron Paul's leading what seems to be a popular groundswell of support for the idea. Somehow I doubt it because, as Geitner has said, auditing the Fed "is a line that we don't want to cross." Translation: ongoing plunder and simple self preservation dictate that TPTB never disclose who really owns the Fed and how it has systematically looted the people for a century.

Why risk revolution or, even worse, the emergence of democracy in Amerikkka, when the "concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich is the greatest on record"?!

Even though TPTB have been at this for some time, I don't think they really grasp that the gig is just about up.

Their usual diversions, like starting a major war probably aren't going to work this time. Because this is really about Peak Everything, the collapse of fiat currency, and the collapse of the "capitalist" system. Even though the young, as noted at the beginning, tend to be painfully stupid, they are more apt than older people to sense (at least intuitively) the profound nature of the coming transition, who are still thinking of this economic crisis largely in terms of its monetary implications.

Needless to say, if you believe any of this, you are a conspiracy theorist.

OK, forget the birther movement

2009-08-09T02:05:00.000-07:00

How about a book review instead?

Based on the few dismissive comments and otherwise near total neglect of my rant on the Rigorous Intuition boards against their nearly unanimous contempt for the birther argument, I've decided to abruptly drop all interest in the subject.

I mean, if Amerikkka has already tolerated two terms of an unelected Boosh and (starting with Clinton but accelerating exponentially under Boosh) the constitution is pretty much a dead letter anyway, why bother to hung up on technicalities?

If the denizens of RI aren't into it, among the exemplars of what we might call (for want of a better term) the "conspiranoid left," a tribe and audience I consider one of my own, then fuck it, neither am I.

And, as Ddjango from P! so accurately noted, if Amierikkka dumps Obama, it still gets Biden and the Clintons, equally CFR/Bilberberg/TPTB.

So, moving right along, I recently read a book I found completely at random, the one pictured above.

It was a hilarious, well-paced, and deftly written portrayal of a unique and intriguing subculture. It was also infuriating, profoundly depressing, and completely amoral. Or perhaps more accurately - it was willfully, defiantly, and joyously immoral.

Anonymously written, if it is what it purports and seems to be, it is the tale of a young insider in the elite world of New York investment banking.

One of the first thing worth noting is the date of publication: August 2008, right before The Implosion, which began with the elite world of New York investment banking and expanded outward from there. Assuming it takes at least a year, at the quickest (usually) to go from pitch to publication, let's assume it was pitched and accepted sometime around the summer of 2007.

Gosh, who could have seen The Implosion coming that far in advance?

Anybody with half a brain and an instinct for global macroeconomics, provided they weren't blinkered by working in "finance" or possession of an MBA.

But the deeper criticism is that "finance" has been the boiler room of the Titanic, driving it full speed ahead to The Iceberg for a long long time and this book fails to to see that in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. Its little crescendo at the end, that it's all being done "for the kids," because the gala benefit affairs sponsored by bankers yield 10% of their gross revenue for good works, after all of the caterers, Grey Goose, blah blah blah, is a bizarre and unexpected non sequitor.

It's a ripping yarn and I read it quickly in two sittings. But when I got to that supposed "justification," after SO much gratuitous elitism, I was shocked the author even dared mention it.

As the reviewers at Amazon aptly stated, it doesn't really cover any new ground not already covered by such works as Wall Street, In the Company of Men, American Psycho, and the like. But it is the most recent iteration of that genre. And, coming at this time as it does, it is worth some meditation (and definitely a read).

In the end, what frustrated me wasn't its elitism, its obscene salaries, its brazen glorification of a sector of society driving the world to its doom, its shameless celebration of really, really expensive hedonism to compensate for insane 100 hour work weeks - although, hey, I've never skipped the line at a New York club by tipping the bouncer $200 and taken bottle service buying top shelf for $300 that could be bought for $30 at a store, and frankly I wouldn't mind experiencing it once or twice in my lifetime.

No, in the end what frustrated me the most was that it was the consummate portrayal of a totally unexamined life, blindly perpetuating a morally bankrupt and savagely destrutive status quo. No, the "it's for kids" bit didn't cut it one bit, although the author is theoretically in his early 20s so I'll cut him some slack. Most of us didn't know fuck all at that age anyway.

The goal of life is not to be the "Most Ballingest Player Ever." The goal of life is not money, power, prestige, and mindless (incredibly expensive) hedonism. At best these are tools, means to certain ends. But what ends? That quest is the central one of an examined and well-lived life, ones that can find and model the sanity we so desparately need.

For all its humor and verve, the book not only misses that mark, it has no idea there was ever even a target to aim at.