ThinkSpeak

God Has Demons?

2012-01-27T12:54:00.000-08:00

Michael Parenti, in his 2010 book, God and His Demons, joins Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins in critiquing what all three would characterize as dangerous superstition. Dawkins and Parenti are careful to clarify that their subject is fundamentalism not all religion. But they do express puzzlement over the appeal of religion even on the less literal level. Dawkins suggests that the comfort, if that’s what is provided, is hardly worth the sacrifice of intellectual honesty required. Parenti takes it a bit further by dismissing even the oft-reported mystic’s feeling of ONENESS as so much self-delusion. So such “spiritual” teachers as Eckhart Tolle, according to Parenti, are at best delusional and at worst preying on the gullible. He does however acknowledge that many so-called people of faith constitute a positive force in promoting a more humane world. But they are not who he’s talking about in the book.

Like Hitchens, Parenti spends a great deal of time gleefully deconstructing biblical passages. His social concerns, beyond both Hitchens and Dawkins, are evident in one of his examples where he claims that the bible mentions homosexuality only 8 times but in one form or another offers numerous injunctions against unfair distribution of wealth. So why then is it commonplace for preachers to rail against homosexuality but nary a tribunal has been appointed to ferret out greedy landowners and financiers? The bible doesn’t mention abortion nor same-sex marriage yet these are the central issues for the majority of fundamentalist Christians. And in the new testament, family values don’t come up. In fact Jesus is a bachelor, by most accounts, hanging out with a dozen guys and in several instances is quite rude and dismissive of women and children.

Logical lapses occur in the great book, something the faithful apparently can skate right over without notice. And creative license with scripture is common. Jews for instance are often hatefully called “Christ Killers” yet very few Jews of the time could have met nor even have heard of Jesus. Why should all Jews be blamed? After all, Jesus himself was a Jew. Yet the formal church, once it came to power, more than occasionally burst forth with deadly pogroms, culminating in the 20th Century holocaust. Pope Pius XII was silent during World War II yet excommunicated all communist party members, world wide, in 1949. Parenti cites examples of wide-eyed individuals spared in natural disasters crediting God with intervening to save them, proclaiming that, “God is great” or such. Yet those who didn’t make it are not mentioned. Many Christians have prayer sessions for those with cancer or other terminal diseases. Do they think that the divine being can be swayed from his “plan” by sucking up? In fact studies by the American Health Journal to ascertain the efficacy of prayer do not support the belief and in some cases actually contradict it. Yes, those prayed for fared worse. The con-artists, for what else can we call someone like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson etc; have proclaimed that natural or other disasters show the deity’s displeasure with human behavior, 911 and Katrina for example being punishment for the tolerance of homosexuality (again) or maybe voting Democrat. The Onion did a lampoon, where God holds a press conference announcing that a recent tsunami was part of his longtime moving-in-mysterious-ways policy.

Speaking of fraud, Parenti has a devastating, for the uninitiated, chapter on Mother Teresa. It seems that she made claims in her fund-raising that turned out to be just a little bit untrue… numbers of schools, hospitals and orphanages her organization supported etc; Seems she spent 8 months of the year jetting around, in a private plane, fleecing the faithful, staying in luxury accommodations and lying about what she was doing in India. After her death her diaries revealed that her professed catholic beliefs were far from how she actually saw things. Never the less, she’s on the fast track for sainthood being as how she was such an effective fund-raiser. Of course she is hardly alone. The Catholic church is wealthier than any corporation you can name. But there’s plenty of competition for those believer dollars. The mega-church con-artists who populate our Sundays and public airwaves may not be in the same league but they’re doing all right. Sometimes they get a little overzealous. A Villanova University research project found that 85% of Roman Church dioceses in the U.S. had been hit by embezzlement over the 2001-6 time period. Jim Baker we all remember, was sentenced to 18 years (served 6) for diverting church funds to personal use. Msgr. John Woolsey of New York City was convicted for stealing $8 million. Even Billy Graham was revealed to have a “slush fund” of $23 million that his flock didn’t know about. Ag Khan, Iman of Islami Muslims owns 600 race horses, several factories, and over 600 “prayer and business” centers. Rev. Moon (why do we call these guys reverend?) was convicted in 1982 of conspiracy and tax fraud serving 13 months (seems when they do get caught they tend to get off kind of lightly… I mean we’re talking about millions bilked from gullible souls). The Moon daughter-in-law wrote a book exposing the family as extremely dysfunctional with drug use, infidelity and the usual lavish life style. In the 1980s 11 top Scientologists were imprisoned for infiltrating, burglarizing and wire-tapping private and government agencies, attempting to stop an investigation. Hundreds of adherents have left, reporting psychological and physical abuse, Some have successfully sued the church.

A section on cults documents abundant instances of serious abuse. The Jim Jones People’s Temple massacre may be the most spectacular but is hardly alone in sadistic psychological and physical practices, usually targeting women, always children and as often as not the men too. Parenti highlights the Mormon church for its sexist and racist beliefs but concludes the section with the thought that maybe the mainstream churches are just cults that have been around a longer time.

The book goes on to demonstrate how secular and religious authorities have worked hand in hand to advance their privileged positions in the social order but that is for my next post.

An Adult Fairy Tale

2012-01-21T13:43:00.000-08:00

The persistence of a fairy tale portraying the United States as a benevolent force in the world, promoting freedom, democracy, health and happiness for all is attributable in part to the fact that embracing the belief is often prerequisite to substantial material abundance, while questioning it can bar the road to such rewards. This would of course hold true, in one form or another, for any of the many empires littering the historical landscape, an insight that might be tolerable if held toward other societies, though it is probably wise to keep it to oneself, but never is it to be seen/said to apply here. Chomsky calls this view U.S. Exceptionalism.

Those who rise in the mainstream (corporate) pundit journalism profession are not those who point out inconsistencies in the tale, no more than those in the church who rise to Cardinal, Bishop etc; are those who question basic assumptions. No, it is “faith” that elevates one to the higher reaches. Those with little (or no) faith must apply only to the marginal congregations, the fringe journals that pay writers in the high two figures.

So reading Noam Chomsky demands a certain suspension of belief in order to consider evidence normally excluded as unduly disturbing to received wisdom. There in the UNwonderland one encounters some surprising notions – Power and Terror, Conflict, Hegemony and the Rule of Force, the Chomsky book under discussion here. The U.S. for example, as an Imperial Power, is a “settler-colonial society” meaning that the native inhabitants were not integrated into the colonial project but were rather exterminated or driven out. An even more unspeakable truth in the world of the mainstream pundit, or intellectual class as Chomsky likes to phrase it, is that “settler-colonial society” applies equally to one of the United States’ chief allies, Israel. This view, though at extreme odds with convention, has the advantage of evaporating the difficulty understanding the puzzling lack of progress in the Israeli/Palestinian “peace process”. There is no progress because the U.S. and Israel are “settler-colonial societies, standing in the way of a world-wide consensus for a two-state solution.

In 1967 Israel, in a quick little war, expanded it’s territory considerably. The United Nations in Resolution 242 called for a peace settlement where Israel would return to it’s borders. Egypt later expanded upon the resolution, adding the idea that a Palestinian state would reside in the occupied territories with security guarantees for Israel. In the U.S. a rivalry between Henry Kissinger and the State Department ended in Kissinger’s favor which meant a veto to support Israel’s decision to choose expansion over security, militarism over diplomacy. A consequence of this decision was the 1973 war with Egypt, a very close call for Israel. For a U.S. pundit, politician or policy maker, to perceive this account is dangerous, to speak it is a career killer.

But lest we stray into the treacherous charge of anti-semitism let’s consider the fairy tale as it applies elsewhere. Iran was “good” after its parliamentary democracy was overthrown (by the U.S. and Britain in 1954) and the Shah installed as a vicious dictator with one of the worst human rights records on the planet. Then it was “bad” when the people overthrew the puppet (unfortunately leading to a medieval theocracy). And it gets “badder and badder” as it continues to refuse to follow orders. It interferes with the internal affairs of Iraq whereas, in the fairy tale remember, U.S. presence is solely for the purposes of promoting freedom and democracy, nothing to do with oil or empire. This by the by also accounts for U.S./Nato bombing of Serbia – failure to follow orders! – but in the fairy tale the bombing was to stop ethnic killing. Even Molly Ivins fell for that one (see Chomsky’s The New Military Humanism).

Haiti, another example: Woodrow Wilson had Haiti invaded in 1915. Its parliamentary system was destroyed, 15,000 Haitains killed and slavery re-instituted. A brutal, murderous national guard was created, a force that has pretty much run things ever since. Two interruptions of note: the ascendancy of populist leader Aristide, twice, both ending in U.S.-supported coups (no U.S.-supported coups during the murderous regimes). How is this presented in the fairy tale version? The U.S., frustrated in its attempts to bring democracy to a backward nation that is perhaps not ready for such advanced ideas, plows on in its maybe naïve mission, to bring enlightenment to the dark corners of the world. By the way: Haiti hosted the first successful slave revolt. A French colony at the time, France, supported by the U.S., demanded reparations, re-payment for loss of its “investment”, a payment plan that kept Haiti impoverished right up until Wilson’s coup de grace.

More fairy tale: during Ronald Reagan’s presidency Nelson Mandala and the African National Congress (ANC) were branded terrorist organizations while South Africa, virtually enslaving the majority of its citizens and invading nearby nations to deadly effect (1. 5 million deaths) were participants in “Constructive Engagement”. Examining Amnesty International’s records on torture and U.S. foreign aid, Prof. Edward Herman reveals an interesting correlation. Not that the U.S. is interested in torture per se but it seems to accompany the kind of regimes the U.S. favors, regimes that just happen to have close (dependent) relations with U.S. corporations whose operations are so unfair to the general population that it turns out to be more economical to suppress and terrorize the population than to compensate properly for extracted resources and labor.

Thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movement we have very handy shorthand with which to characterize the long tradition of who rules in the U.S. and for whose benefit. And we can look to another slogan, slightly modified, to see what can be done about it - 99%-ers of the world, unite!

The Big Boys

2012-01-13T13:29:00.000-08:00

For their book, The Big Boys, Ralph Nader and William Taylor lined up interviews with U.S. corporate CEOs to get a sense of the mid 1980s business world as viewed from that lofty perch. In a way, little has changed since. The basic motivation remains, profit. But the presence of greed has undergone what could under-statedly be called an amplification. Manufacturing an actual non-sweat-shop product was still an on-going operation in the U.S. You could buy U.S.-made shoes, tools, autos, dishwashers, VCRs… Steel Plants were still forging those ol’ I-beams, but not for long. The more lucrative short cuts of the casino-financial world had not yet fully kicked in, where profit is generated by manipulating or betting on market fluctuations.

Corporate raiders were the rage in this time-frame, not quite as damaging or sexy but still, you could turn a few million and devastate a community of workers. Take out huge loans to buy a company, sell off select assets, downsize workers, shifting the company’s primary focus to servicing its debt. Very lucrative fees involved. A family-owned lumber company in the Northwest which prided itself on its labor relations and ecological sensitivity was taken over. The tried and true pattern soon brought the company to cutting old growth forest and laying off workers. As expectations for profits increase for one class, damage to workers and other “losers” naturally must make up the difference.

Big Boys does a series of nine portraits of movers and shakers, based on interviews although three CEOs refused interview requests. The elusive Roger Smith, he of the Michael Moore film Roger and Me, and two others had to be sketched from comments in the media, their public speeches and other sources. Moore’s film pointed out that GM moved profitable(!) plants to Mexico, leaving Flint, Michigan, Moore’s hometown, a near ghost town. Greed is camouflaged with a euphemism – Globalization. To illustrate the corporate, top-down mentality, the book describes General Motors, under Smith, using its clout to locate a new plant, with its massive parking lot, in the middle of an old established working class Detroit neighborhood. Other options were clearly available but the air up in the GM boardroom was obviously too rarefied for such considerations. Smith’s fleet emphasis was profits of course but on flash and style rather than reliability and safety. Nader credits Smith with delaying the introduction of the airbag by years through his dogged and obstinate opposition. The cost in lives was real and substantial but neither Smith nor GM was ever held accountable. As with the tobacco companies, literally murderous policies face, at worst, monetary settlements.

What GM did for Detroit, David Roderick of U.S. Steel, did for Chicago and Pittsburgh. Facing “reality”, as he saw it, Roderick made decisions that devastated neighborhoods with job lay-offs and plant closings, even demolishing rather than sell plants to workers who tried to organize to that end. This experiment was not to be allowed. Apparently tycoons will instinctively oppose the rise of any non-hierarchal institution, even if it hurts profits. No surprise really. Their political bed-fellows in D.C. fear the same in third world nations and will rush to crush any serious questioning of the “free market”.

Now you can imagine when we get to Dow Chemical’s Paul Oreffice that there’s going to be some impressive practice of the fine art of denial. Again, comparing the tobacco companies, when profits are threatened by reality reality is going out the door. In its place is summoned well-paid “experts” who can attest to this or that mirage in long-winded pseudo-scientific verbiage – just think Global Climate change debate on Faux News. The remaining personalities in this book are all very interesting but they none of them stray more than centimeters from the notion that Milton Friedman’s economic theories are figurative tablets of self-evident God-incised wisdom. Sort of mirror-images of Soviet Union officials at the same time in history maintaining the infallibility of Karl Marx… or was it Mother Russia? Somebody’s going to have to take the Question Authority bumper sticker seriously here and steer us away from Lemming Cliff, and soon. Occupy and Roll!

The Smartest Thieves in the Room

2012-01-06T09:12:00.000-08:00

The Enron debacle is maybe old news but still elucidates a corporate mentality that ever seeks dominion over our every thought and breath, that it may more effectively pick our bones. In their 2003 book, The Smartest Guys in the Room, Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind remind the gullible that so-called experts in the financial world need to be scrutinized carefully, that the respectability of their $300 haircuts and $4,000 dollar suits wither in the harsh light of a mug shot.

Wall Street apologists will caution that we should not judge a whole industry by the criminal behavior of a few bad apples but scrutinizing those bad apples reveals some interesting if wormy data: top Enron officers were among the loudest proponents of the “free market”, calling for deregulation when it promised them rip-off privilege but crying out for government largess when that would firm up their quarterly reports. The most prestigious of accounting firms, Arthur Anderson, turned a blind eye to illegal and/or deceptive Enron accounting methods since that was immensely profitable for the firm (short-term of course – ultimately it destroyed them). Wall Street analysts bought into Enron PR instead of analyzing. Politicians took the money and ran. Lawyers bent the law, Bankers took obscene fees while putting their depositors at risk. The central theme throughout the Enron story? Greed: million dollar fees left and right bought compliance and silence; multi-million dollar bonuses dazzled and corrupted; A vicious back-stabbing competitive Enron culture rewarded chicanery and weeded out employees with integrity, the few who mustered the courage to question the party line.

In the end co-conspirators were all frantically blaming someone else and one cornered big fish turned state’s evidence to reduce prison time. Enron’s Chief Financial Officer, Andy Fastow (CFO-turned-rat), served six country club years and, despite millions in fines, remains a millionaire. Top executives were urging employees to buy stock, “It’s going nowhere but up, we’ll all be rich!” while quietly selling off their own shares and squirreling away millions. Part of the function of accountability is to deter future crime, which apparently Enron and other corporate criminals rise above, ill-gotten gains only partially recouped. Another manifestation of this truly class war is the decision by our Muslim-Socialist-Communist-Uncitizen president not to pursue criminal charges against the previous criminal administration. To paraphrase a famous pirate, “Rob a convenience store and you’re a criminal, rob the U.S. treasury and you’re an entrepreneur.”

There was some meager justice in the Enron case: CEO Jeff Skilling spent $42 million in legal fees and will be in prison (albeit country club) until he’s 74. His family however remains free and holding, and enjoying, his remaining millions. The infamous Ken Lay, George Bush Jr.’s Kenny Boy, creator of Enron, would have received a stiff sentence also had he not gone and died – fruit for conspiracy theories here. His family also is enjoying whatever remains of his fortune not appropriated by defense lawyers and not squandered by his profligate spending. Most negative consequences however fell upon naive Enron employees and other investors. With the recent MF Global Holdings bankruptcy, larger even than Enron, it is clear that, to mix a metaphor, gangsters still have a pipeline into the henhouse and the guards… well, what guards? Why ever would the Free Market need guards?

Holy Daze

2011-12-31T10:54:00.001-08:00

This is an abbreviated version of my annual holiday note to friends with a pic of me around 13 (that would be 1957) - so cool (there's a white beetle painted on the left pocket - a few friends & I called ourselves The Beetles!):

Holydays:

During 2011 I finished putting simple recordings of the songs in my Songbook, 1969-2009 on youtube, so anyone with a book can search my name & a song title to see how it goes. Now I’m in process of recording them again in more finished versions, relative of course - they’re still demos compared to professional recordings. But it is such fun to lay down a track with guitar & vocals as a guide, add bass, drums, maybe piano, almost always lead guitar and do final versions of vocals, sometimes adding harmony. For this purpose I’ve gotten a bass guitar, mac-mini for recording & coordinated my P.A. equipment to put the sound into and out of the computer. I plan to put the songs on-line, in batches, like CD releases, designing a cover for each batch. When I figure out how to upload them: thinkspeak.bandcamp.com This extends my archiving project which is essentially complete regarding painting and cartoons. A memoir is in the works too, now about 180 pages but keeps expanding. The only readers I envision for this project are daughter Kallio (but she’s only a maybe) and me.

The six books I’ve published over the last year or two are available as downloads or hardcopy (includes the crime fiction novel Arrival): search my name at lulu.com The 15-song free download collaboration with KVpop is still available with links on my blog & painting website www.thinkspeak.net

Wednesday evenings I jam with a group in Inman Park where I first started fooling around with bass. They also have a drum set I sit down at sometimes. I created a drum out of a sheetrock mud container, painting it up with anti-war messages, for use at demonstrations since the illegal Iraq invasion, so have developed some limited drumming skill – cut broom-handle drumsticks. I’ve been to some of the OccupyAtlanta gatherings and am heartened by this way-overdue movement to question who rules for whose benefit. I’ve read Naomi Klein’s expose, Shock Doctrine, on this question as well as Ralph Nader’s profile of corporate CEOs. Currently reading The Smartest Guys in the Room, about the Enron fiasco. I usually review this kind of stuff on my blog. Been reading Swedish crime fiction lately and some Brits, Peter Robinson, John Harvey and rereading George V. Higgins. In a book club, we mostly read contemporary fiction. Of course I read some of the incredible volume of stuff I encounter on-line, about nukes, corporate crime, injustice, environmental degradation etc; democracynow.org, fair.org, commondreams.org, zmag.org, counterpunch.org, likethedew.org (which publishes my rants & drawings). I have to say, music is what pro-occupies me centrally these days, jamming whenever opportunity arises and doing my recording project, some new songs.

Head Trip

2011-12-23T14:00:00.000-08:00

oil painting, Out of the Blue, Tom Ferguson

I just remembered this morning that phrase, haven’t heard or thought it in years. Someone on a head trip might be someone who is out of touch, distant, insensitive to others, preoccupied with ideas.
Under the influence of psychedelics people in the timeframe I’m thinking of were subject to vibrations - music could send you into near ecstasy and a hug could feel soooo good. In the same way criticism or threats could bring scary waves of paranoia. Another drug term, mind-fucker, would be someone who exploited that vulnerability as a put-down artist, sadistically playing on people’s insecurities in order to feel a warped sense of superiority.
Psychedelics would somehow jerk you into the present with a raw intensity where, seeing things for the first time, the world was a marvelous place indeed, full of absolute wonder and delight. And threats. Beauty was very much magnified or rather, the world was seen as it is, a wondrous miracle including the realization of one’s own being in it. One’s psychology was magnified, and being shaped by a dysfunctional society that experience was not always pleasant. If your self-esteem was low, whether behind the mask of arrogance or the mask of shyness, one could be subject to fear, paranoia and panic.
I can now see the head trip, thanks to the clarifying work of a lot of writers, particularly Eckhart Tolle, as referring to the ego, created by the cultural belief that we are separate vulnerable entities, thus mired in alienation and fear. The feeling of bliss reported by many, however temporary, challenges that existential view with an insight into the interconnectedness of all things. Feeling this interconnectedness accounts for the bliss or what Tolle calls enlightenment. The ego though, so established and dominating but threatened by consciousness, and dependent on a belief in separation, can intrude into well-being, distracting one from the interconnection conviction, sowing doubt and fear.
An artificial altered state amplifies it but the same process is at work in one’s daily psychology. Just this morning I was in bed, waking up, realizing I was thinking thinking thinking and breathing very shallow, even holding my breath as I thought. At one point I noticed I was reliving a pleasant memory and feeling mellow then became aware of holding my breath, took a breath, became present, yes, then lost it, started thinking again, this time remembering a social blunder and exchanging mellow for guilt, embarrassment, self-attack and the physical pain accompanying such thoughts. Who is the attacker I thought? Ego. Be the observer I said, and say.

An Impeachable Offense

2011-12-18T10:58:00.000-08:00

"I guess I find that judgemental, yr honor."

Government Officials take oaths to defend and protect the Constitution. Violation of that oath is, or ought to be, an impeachable offense. Take for example the recent Supreme Court ruling asserting that corporations are persons with all the rights and privileges thereof, particularly free speech, which they can of course, given their resources, more easily exercise than “real” persons. This would be less treasonous if the intent were not crafting seductive messages designed to legitimize anti-democratic hierarchy and funnel power and money ever upward. Since corporations are about, and only about, profits such messages please stockholders and CEOs but deliberately undermine democracy, which, if memory serves, is what the Constitution is about. The ideological Right confuses freedom with unimpeded business activity (the “free market”), just as it defines the pursuit of happiness. A close reading of the Constitution offers little support for this degrading notion.

Legislating other laws and pursuing policies that favor corporations over the people (we the people) also qualify as impeachable offenses. We are laying down the law here. Trade agreements such as NAFTA and GATT, for example. And policies of the foreign variety, which serve the same masters. Aren’t they too violations of an oath that pledges fealty to the welfare of the people, hardly served by extending ruthless corporate hegemony and trashing the life system?

It is disheartening to review accounts of police and military blatantly siding with owners against workers during early union struggles. Today we aren’t too surprised at Egyptian or Syrian violent reactions to awakening democracy but police oppression here of peaceful demonstrators flies in the face of our indoctrination (unless we’ve been paying attention). The latest impeachable offense has been committed by the senate when it overwhelmingly, 93-7 (who are those 7?), passed SB 1867, granting the military the power to indefinitely detain any U.S. citizen. That’s indefinite as in forever! No habeus corpus, no trial. This purports to be aimed at terrorists, of course, but the 1% are feeling exposed, getting nervous. Their minions in the Senate thus pass this reactionary bill, responding to the stirring of democracy begun in the Arab Spring, as manifest here in the plutocracy-exposing Occupy Wall Street movement. Off with their heads is perhaps too harsh but impeachment seems an appropriate response to the anti-democratic beast.

Hinson & Haze, episode 19. (concluding)

2011-12-16T08:23:00.000-08:00

This is the last panel of 36 that I submitted back in the late 80s, attempting to get syndicated... no luck. But it was fun. I had envisioned the duo traveling to Alaska next, then across to and down the coast of Asia, maybe transporting them sometimes to current hot spots enabling me to comment on stuff happening around the world. Since the 3 syndicates I approached were not interested I let it drop.

Hinson & Haze, episode 18.

2011-12-09T09:00:00.000-08:00

wherein a geyser turns back on itself

Hinson & Haze, episode 17.

2011-12-03T05:36:00.001-08:00

wherein the patriarchal indictment is read

Hinson & Haze, episode 16.

2011-11-26T09:54:00.000-08:00

wherein Feminism meets the Continental Divide

Hinson & Haze, episode 15.

2011-11-20T14:02:00.000-08:00

wherein Haze inquires into thick steak stakes

Hinson & Haze, episode 14.

2011-11-12T13:40:00.001-08:00

wherein da duo adopt a trucker guru

Vets Occupy Washington (1932)

2011-11-07T08:23:00.000-08:00

The Bonus Army, 20,000 strong, converged on D.C., set up a shanty-town, seeking relief from the horrific conditions of the Great Depression. These WW I. veterans and their families demanded promised bonuses. They were tolerated for a time but then those-who-follow-orders, including such luminaries as General MacArthur, Major Eisenhower and his aid, George Patton, were sent to disperse the “insubordinate” vets, leaving three dead and more than a thousand injured. This was under President Hoover who was villified when hordes of homeless victims of Laisse Faire capitalism named their make-shift villages Hooverville. Later when vets marched on Washington President Roosevelt personally greeted them, serving coffee. You can imagine the response, had Fox Faux News been around at the time. So far, L.A. has the only city council to recognize the Hoovervilles of our time by endorsing their (our) Occupation.

Naomi Klein points out in her book, Shock Doctrine, that the Great Depression came out of policies very like those being pushed today by the corporate-owned, two-factioned Republicratic Party – privatization, consolidation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, retrenchment of hard-won programs that benefit the average citizen, fanatical belief in a mythical “free market” whose Darwinian-Draconian rules, under close scrutiny, turn out to only apply to the 99%.

Howard Zinn, in his People’s History of the U.S., itemizes many a discouraging outcome for people in that Depression organizing against the pirateers but not all efforts were defeated. The 40 hour week was attained by commited activists. A banner in my home town still expresses another: Unions, the people who brought you weekends. The 1% have always recognized that a certain share of the spoils must be allocated to a malleable fraction of the population, call it middle class, to serve as a buffer against the rabble, the discontented. They have argued however, among themselves, just how big this buffer need be and we can see since Reagan that those who favor the smaller buffer have been dominating the argument. When the disconted population reaches a certain mass we get “unrest”, Occupiers in the town squares. We are then offered the Hoover response, guns and clubs, teargas, or the Roosevelt response, placation, expand the buffer. Fine if you’re in the expansion, not so fine if you ain’t. Maybe we can do better. Maybe we have to.

Hinson & Haze, episode 13.

2011-11-06T13:01:00.000-08:00

wherein the cuddly couple examine things grandly ordinary

Illegal Entry

2011-10-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

Our corporate-owned government seems variously intolerant of U.S. citizens utilizing their own parks in order to exercise first amendment rights to assemble to reddress grievances, yet nary a peep do we hear from same regarding a major foreign-owned propaganda campaign set up in the heart of our publicly-owned broadcast sector (this refers to the obvious fact that Fox –Faux- News is a transparently biased, pro-corporate misinformation operation).

Another parallel we could draw is that great resources are spent to prevent entry or expel poor foreigners (illegals? aliens?) from our nation yet, nary a peep again, when a foreign billionaire saunters in and commandeers a major media outlet, fanning ignorance and bigotry and distorting our political process. I think there might be some peeping if the foreign association were, rather than a pro-capitalist ideologue, a more or less objective presence (compared to U.S. media) such as say, Al-jazeera or perhaps Britain’s The Guardian.

The slogan 1% and 99% is imperfect since it is actually the ideologue-faction of the top 20% and their deluded co-conspirators coopting our Democracy. But it is brilliant short-hand for discussing and highlighting just how important and “classified” class is in the U.S. To raise questions about equity and fairness, distribution of wealth and political influence is to set off a knee-jerk chorus of “class warfare” from the ubiquitous brownshirt punditry. But the short-hand finesses the usual media censorship-by-omission, reaching many who know in their hearts but rarely find pundit confirmation that the game is rigged by… the 1%.

I know a guy who stands on Peachtree Street sometimes, holding up signs that if you could leisurely read, and have him explain, you still might not get. I’ve tried to refer him to the useful word succinct but he just looks at me, as perplexed as I am about his message. Now I’ve got an example of how to reach people driving by at 30mph, a sign that even Faux News can’t completely ignore nor effectively mock. Madison Avenue is envious of a movement that came up with a slogan that just might nudge the conscience, or self-interest, of elected officials who otherwise routinely succumb to the seemingly omnipotent campaign dollar. Until we institute public financing of elections, we the 99% can only hope.

2011-10-31T11:56:00.000-07:00

wherein Hinson & Haze regard the afterlife

Opiate of Empire

2011-10-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

William Manchester’s book title, A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, Portrait of an Age, doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Well worth the read, despite it’s awkward title. Published in 1992 the book is timeless in that it portrays human dysfunction and folly as they constantly triumph over reason and compassion. This is certainly at odds with popular notions of religion and European conquest. Manchester comments that, Christianity survived despite medieval Christians, not because of them. If this book were more widely read, that might not hold true, Christianity might not survive.

This is for many of the same reasons that Richard Dawkins raises in his book The God Delusion. The whole enterprise is made up of insupportable beliefs, superstition in a word, and when people become aware that what they believe is in error it is hard to not have the belief evaporate. Of course the option is always there to deny the information, certainly the course embraced by the medieval mind - and with a vengeance. Manchester documents how the “Holy Roman Empire” was corrupt and venal, little above the Roman orgy and bloody pastime of execution and coup. When the Reformation arrived in reaction it was in true reaction – dogma shifted only slightly, as evidenced by the Puritanism still plaguing our shores. But the penalty for doctrinal deviance remained the fiery stake - most of the fun was gone. One can gain an appreciation for what is meant by “freedom and democracy”, flawed and limited as it is in our world, and threatened ever as it is by the constant resurgence of the medieval mind, whether that manifests in whatever religion or whatever political ideology arising out of the great dysfunction of ego.

The brutality of the age is relieved by the incredible beauty and majesty of Renaissance art, ironically created under the patronage of the most avaricious and ruthless of princes, kings and popes, otherwise seemingly fiercely competing with each other for the prize of most depraved. This mentality of course had to be exported. And exported it was, to regions not always but sometimes, quite advanced in their humanitarianism. The Portugese found their way around the horn of Africa to the riches of the east. The Spanish, English and French elected to squabble over as much as they could reach to the west. It is almost funny to imagine the armor-clad representative of a King stepping on the shores of a continent larger than the home country, planting a flag and claiming the whole shebang for his Sovereign. I was unaware of the voyage of Magellan, leaving Spain with a convoy of five ships and arriving back in Seville three years later, having circumnavigated the globe. Of the 265 person crew, only 18 survived, Magellan not among them, having perished in a fit of fundamental religious foolishness. This could be a metaphor for our own time, where superstitious beliefs in a “free market” and borders and races and scarcity carry us down the rapids to the rocks below the falls.

Hinson & Haze, episode 11.

2011-10-22T09:02:00.001-07:00

wherein Haze, once again, challenges the status quo

Hinson & Haze, episode 10.

2011-10-15T23:15:00.000-07:00

wherein our trendy tourists visit the Salt Palace

Hinson & Haze, episode 9.

2011-10-08T11:52:00.001-07:00

wherein the Cucumber factor is elucidated

Hinson & Haze, episode 8.

2011-10-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

Wherein Hinson & Haze encounter the cucumber factor

Hinson & Haze, episode 7.

2011-09-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

wherein the new age duo are back on the road

Hinson & Haze episode 6.

2011-09-20T11:05:00.001-07:00

Hinson & Haze Descend into the Grand Canyawn

2011-09-15T07:25:00.000-07:00

Privileging Prominent Predators

2011-09-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

Some persons would like to view the U.S. government as a protector of workers and the average citizen against the excesses of predatory capitalism. Predators however view the U.S. government as their employee, a potential adversary who must be constantly reminded who they work for. This element also highly covets the government, with its taxation powers and consequent bulging treasury, as a target for voracious clandestine raids – if it can just get its hands on the keys, which it usually accomplishes by forcing selective legislation, judicious interpretation of same and favorable administrative policy. In other words legislators needing huge outlays for their campaigns trade campaign contributions for access, influence over legislation and vote-casting – sometimes legislators and staff are saved the bother of having to write the desired legislation by being handed an industry-written, ready-to-go bill, all the I-s dotted, all the T-s crossed.

At the presidential level, campaign contributions accomplish much the same agenda-shaping. The judicial branch is appointed by these same beholden public officials so naturally candidates reflect the values of the chief contributors - corporations and wealthy individuals, almost always drawn in fact from their ranks. Clearly public financing of elections would shift the dynamic toward Democracy. Legislators would be beholden to the taxpayers rather than corporations. Corruption is another matter but certainly could be dealt with like any other law enforcement issue. Speaking of corruption, a closely related issue is ownership of the media. Today the mainstream media is corporate-owned thus, like the corporate-owned legislature, corporate-domination narrows perception of possible courses of action, inculcating the average citizen with one-sided propaganda, in effect marginalizing citizens and any alternative political stance.

So the task for those who prefer Democracy to Plutocracy would seem to be to democratize the three branches of government and de-person-ize corporations before the consequences of their current behavior renders the planet uninhabitable.

Hinson & Haze, episode 4.

2011-09-01T17:37:00.000-07:00

In which Haze has her recurring nuke dream and advises Hinson on things cosmic.
(click on image for larger view)

Hinson & Haze: at the Grand Canyawn

2011-08-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

Hinson & Haze ride with Rhinestone

2011-08-19T08:21:00.001-07:00

Hinson & Haze

2011-08-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

These two characters hitch-hike around, platonically plodding after whatever comes their way. Hinson’s a book-ish intellectual, Haze a more earthy feminist. Their quest begins in Southern California where they encounter Rhinestone, country music star. I intend to run all 35 episodes (running two per means half that many posts). I leave it to Hinson & Haze to examine received wisdom for this period.

Mystery

2011-07-21T11:35:00.001-07:00

Humboldt Avenue, oil on canvas, 1970, Tom Ferguson

Imagine waking delighted to a place of astonishing beauty and vast complexity, of infinite micro and macro magnitude gifted with a cosmic capacity to replicate itself, slightly modified, every instant. This would be an impressive locale to visit and of course that is what we are doing, visiting here. Or it could be argued that we are not tourists at all but are intricately woven into a metaphoric tapestry of magnificent interconnection. Here is the root of polarization: the Visiting faction thinks it is separate, the Abiding faction feels interconnection.

The Visitor experiences frightening emotions and responds with safety-seeking behavior, attempting to accumulate a protective buffer of power, money, prestige… safety, for since s/he sees/thinks herself alien s/he sees/thinks himself vulnerable. In a word, identifying with the separate entity s/he conceptualizes her/himself to be that entity is subject to slings and arrows, the nets of chance. Since no amount of safety will ever be enough in a world of relentless change, an obsession develops which precludes noticing the world as described in the first sentence above, except in odd unguarded moments, facilitated by alcohol et al, or perhaps art.

One could look at the Abiding faction as the advanced guard of an awakening, one anticipated intuitively by historical figures of religion, philosophy and art. An awakening whose trajectory hopefully intersects such that their (our) frantic destructive behavior over these millennia will survive only in the embarrassed annals of an infant species, while the awakening one blossoms into full consciousness and the harmony native to that state - justice, empathy and environmental balance.

The Most Dangerous Moment in History

2011-07-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

During the Cuban Missile Crisis U.S. destroyers attacked a Russian submarine. The submarine was given orders to launch its nuclear warheads against the U.S. This would have certainly precipitated a full retaliatory exchange and we would most likely not be here to discuss it. The submarine commander refused the order. I had never heard this story until I read it in one of Noam Chomsky’s articles. Though civilization was spared, the mind-set that brought us to that moment is alive and well. That mind-set is the subject of most of Chomsky’s books.

Interventions is a collection of short essays aimed at a broad readership, commissioned by the New York Times Syndicate after Noam Chomsky’s 2001 best seller 9 – 11. One of the author’s central claims is that the mainstream media confines debate to a narrow status quo, roughly Hysterical Right to Middle Conservative with few exceptions. As if to confirm Chomsky’s thesis the syndicate distributed the essays abroad but nary a one found its way into the U.S., neither in the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times etc;

Iraq is the primary topic, not surprising given the essays were written during what Chomsky calls a criminal invasion. He exposes administration lies about WMD, Al Queda/Saddam ties and involvement in 911, deconstructing U.S. claims to be promoting democracy - it being true when you take into account that in their minds democracy = plutocracy, being demonstrably false when you use a non-Orwellian definition. One example: polls showed that 90% of Turks opposed allowing the U.S. to invade Iraq through Turkey. The administration ferociously berated the Turkish military and government for following the wishes of the people.

Chomsky lays out an analysis of what’s going on that stands the mainstream propaganda machine on its head. U.S. intentions in Iraq are to set up a permanent military base in the center of the richest oil reserves area on the planet. Israel is a U.S. aircraft carrier maintained to aid the imperial quest (in return Israel gets the U.S. veto at the U.N.). U.S. policy toward Serbia/Kosovo and Cuba (well, the world really) is to vigorously discourage independence from U.S. centered Corporate rule or as they like to call it, the “free market”. In the history of this movement it came very close to triumph but was thwarted, partially and only temporarily by the election of Theodore Roosevelt. Laboring mightily since that defeat they now sense victory and are straining at the fetters of democracy, yearning to throw off at long last and forever that notion of equality that stands in the way of their absolute superiority.

Pickpockets at PSC

2011-07-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

This is my public comment made 7/6/11 to the GA. Public Service Commission on the occasion of their consideration of Georgia Power's request for yet another raid on the public treasury in the form of rate hikes to cover anticipated cost over-runs for their nuclear fantasies. They already were granted rate hikes to cover building the new reactors and an additional amount to cover the loss in credit ratings due to pursuing dangerous nuclear technology. You have to hand it to them, they've got gall.

Mulling over what to say for this meeting it occurred to me that the creators of this Commission did not choose GPC - Georgia Power Commission. Words have meaning so I was happy to notice what PSC stands for until I remembered George Orwell and how political bodies sometimes engage a practice that has come to be dubbed Orwellian.

Barbara Tuchman, in her book The March of Folly, defines folly as acting against one’s own self-interest. The business and government officials who decided to build sixty nuclear plants on an earth-quake fault don’t necessarily fit the definition. By now those leaders are probably living on nice pensions far from Fukushima so their personal interests could be said to have been served. But I think we would have to conclude that Orwell had been at work, that Public Service was really not what they were about.

Which brings me to argue that the public is not served by granting profit-seeking companies pickpocket access to the public treasury. It is even less served when those companies pursue the folly of dangerous nuclear power. I hope it doesn’t require any more Fukushimas for us to realize that when the nuclear industry chants its mantra of “safe and clean” it is committing high Orwellian-speak. Nuclear technology is expensive, risky, cumbersome, polluting and yes, dangerous. It is time to give serious consideration to NOT dangerous alternatives, which are showing themselves more competitive and benign with each passing year. I speak of Solar, Wind and Conservation.

In this new climate - I would say post-Fukushima but that disaster still bubbles ominously to our west – I refer you to the website of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, IEER.org where you can download their Roadmap for a U.S. Energy Future, a roadmap that persuasively excludes coal and nuclear, both proven truly dangerous to the health of life on this planet. When you enable an alcoholic you do neither the addict nor the public a service.

As a post script I would like to add that Germany, Switzerland and Italy have all recently made the sensible commitment to eliminating nuclear power, turning to alternatives, in which they already are far ahead of the U.S. And as we speak two nuclear reactors in Nebraska are threatened by flooding, a not unpredictable event given that reactors must be located near and are dependent on large volumes of water.

Commonist Nostalgia

2011-06-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

Michael Parenti’s book Superpatriotism is an excellent deconstruction of “free market” ideology. He claims that the people of Eastern Europe and Russia had guaranteed jobs, health care, housing, education etc; With the fall of the USSR they entertained visions of suburban McMansion, two car garage etc; but what they got is shit and corruption: gangsters running things in collaboration with dictators, no real political input, more or less fake elections like here, malnutrition, no work, no food, no suburbia.... they become third world… and they wish they had back what they had before the fall. They aren’t idealizing it, they definitely lacked political freedom, due process etc; but they had the basics and the basics are pretty important – try going without’em. The comparison isn't of "freedom and tyranny but of having the basics and of not.

Noam Chomsky has also pointed out, in his curtain-lifting books, that in the Soviet domains of Cold War days the people had the bare necessities - even high government officials lived in modest apartments - whereas in the U.S. domains, Central and South America, Indonesia, etc; a tiny wealthy elite were maintained (so long as they served U.S. corporate interests) while the majority population endured deprivation, malnutrition, poverty and were threatened by accusations of "Communist!", which made them targets of death squads, if they tried to organize to improve their lot. The U.S. provided much of the means for this oppression via “foreign aid”, CIA intervention, military training and arms – funded by U.S. taxpayers of course. So the bottom people of an affluent nation fund the oppression of bottomers of another nation. As the observation goes, the wealth is created by the workers and divided among the owners. The owners own/control the media so we get ministers of misinformation like Rush Limbo, O’reilly etc; keeping us distracted from the exquisite scam by demonizing immigrants, Islam, the homeless, dark-skinned people, gays, women… whatever works. This history is shameless and disturbing enough but as the logic of the elite notion of globalization plays out our capacity to rationalize injustice will be challenged as it encroaches upon our personal space.

Fear of Sharing

2011-06-23T10:05:00.000-07:00

Just finished The Big Rich by Bryan Burrough. One of the things that struck me about the Texas oil-millionaires, aside from their often ostentatious and outrageous consumption, was that many, despite immense wealth freeing them from the necessity to work for a living, continued to go into the office six days a week like any other working stiff. Roy Cullen even drove a cheap Chevrolet and brown bagged his lunch. Since they were basically workaholics, why were they so concerned about “big spending liberals” taxing them to death? They could have simply paid the tax owed, say 40% or whatever it was, and still had way more than they knew what to do with. They certainly weren’t working for their salaries, struggling to meet the mortgage, pay the bills.

Unfortunately these very wealthy individuals were mostly extremist conservatives who shifted the country rightward with their undemocratic money influence. Cullen even seriously argued for the idea of one dollar one vote. They funded McCarthy, William F. Buckley, John Birch Society, KKK etc; right wing radio and newspapers and supported politicians who would do their bidding and went after those who wouldn’t with Swiftboat type campaigns, funding their opponents, and not just in Texas. They funded the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, fully buying into the hysterical religion of anti-communism. Of course not every oil millionaire fits the profile. Some became world-class partiers, some collected art and enjoyed high culture, donated to worthy causes. Cullen, again, gave away over 90% of his fortune to hospitals and universities while otherwise completely embracing the right wing stereotype.

This kind of concentrated wealth has repercussions. When workaholics are out there feeding their addiction and are willing to use their influence to grease government wheels in order to pull off deals that include harmful environmental and social costs then we all lose, enabling a dysfunctional class. Cullen’s one dollar one vote philosophy isn’t that far off as embodied in our political system where politicians must raise huge sums to finance their campaigns. As Molly Ivins, a Texan of a different stripe, used to say, “You dance with who brung ya.” If the public finances elections then it is the public who brung the politicians so it is the public, not the corporations and wealthy class, who they owe, who they represent. The health care debate, military spending, corporate tax policy, the whole range of issues would be a whole different discussion under those circumstances. That class would still own the media and thus limit if not control debate but there might be something we could do about that too.

Nuclear Power After Fukushima

2011-06-14T08:18:00.000-07:00

Journalist Stephanie Cooke was at the Carter Center June 7 to promote her book, In Mortal Hands, a Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age. Her talk emphasized the Fukushima disaster and drew from history to support her anti-nuke view. The industry, for example, consistently underplays accidents, waiting until things have cooled off, when people have lost interest, assumed it’s all over, on to other things, when they finally admit the true figures of radiation releases, extent of damage etc; Even then they hedge with comforting denials of long-term effects, in language that may be technically correct but misleading. This could describe precisely corporate/government PR strategy around the BP oil spill, the Valdez disaster, Katrina, Chernobyl, conditions for cleanup crews at ground zero…. doesn’t seem to matter, those invested in the irresponsible continue to claim, and may even believe, that it’s all safe, under control, no problem. If belief, it’s belief of convenience. When your livelihood depends on believing something chances are you will talk yourself into it. Or at least you will keep your mouth shut. Due to this delay strategy fewer citizens are aware that three of the Fukushima reactors experienced full melt-down and that high levels of radiation are contaminating land and sea. The situation is an on-going catastrophe which, hopefully can be contained. Cooke informs us that contamination from this accident will be around for the rest of our lives. How many of these assaults can our life system withstand, do ya think?

Ms. Cooke was interviewed on nation-wide radio within hours of the Fukushima accident. The show also had a pro-nuker who assured listeners that the accident was low severity, it would all pass, a minor situation etc; Locally a Georgia Tech Professor did the same. The Japanese utility, TEPCO, several years before the current accident, was caught falsifying data (confirming that utilities tend to view safety as a public relations problem). The CEO was fired/resigned but shortly after hired as a high-paid “advisor” in the same company. Cooke claims that the Japanese squelched opposition to nuclear plants by creating a tax, which was showered on those who lived in the rural areas selected for plant location. The U.S. encouraged nuclear development in Japan, as in other nations, as part of its Peaceful Atoms project, which really amounted to a propaganda campaign behind which nuclear weapons could be pursued. The sad truth is that whatever nuclear proponents might claim in the “safe and clean” department, their real project is a major raid on the U.S. treasury and utility ratepayers with the macho side-benefit of Weapons of Mass Destruction. They make the Mafia seem like stumbling amateurs.

Energy Roadmap

2011-06-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free, a Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy

The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) offers the book as a free download on its website (www.ieer.org). It is a product of IEER and the Nuclear Policy Research Institute. Its author, Dr. Arjun Makhijani, had to be talked into doing the book by S. David Freeman and Dr. Helen Caldicott. He had been so pre-occupied with research on the environmental and health affects of nuclear testing and processing that he was unaware of the advances in technology that had occurred during those years. Thus his skepticism and reluctance were jettisoned by the virtual revolution he discovered when he finally agreed to take on the research.

The book addresses the crisis represented by severe climate disruption, oil insecurity and nuclear proliferation. Makhijani set out to answer the question: is it possible to eliminate CO2 emissions from the U.S. energy sector without resort to nuclear power, without purchasing off-sets and at reasonable cost? His book answers in the affirmative, and provides a roadmap to get us there in 30 to 50 years.

The prime alternatives in Arjun’s scenario are wind and solar, augmented by hydropower, compressed air and back-up natural gas. Developments in hybrids and batteries make feasible a situation where parked cars could either feed or draw from the grid as needed.
U.S. electrical consumption could be more than met by wind generation in 12 Midwestern and Rocky Mountain states. Just the parking lots and rooftops in the U.S. could provide, via solar installations, most U.S. electricity needs. The Roadmap could be created with existing technology, requiring no miracle break-through, although of course developments in all areas would only shorten the timeline and/or reduce cost.

The political will to pursue this roadmap of course is the rub. Entrenched interests have the ear of policy makers. For example, a Blue Ribbon commission was appointed by the President to study the future of nukes in the U.S. Neither Dave Freeman, Dr. Caldicott or Makhijani were invited despite their knowledge and credentials, presumably because their opposition to nuclear power might skewer the pro-nuke conclusions presumably wished for, presumably due to ideology and industry campaign contributions. It has always been thus, folly will triumph unless its only effective adversary, an informed democracy, is mobilized.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (review)

2011-05-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

Dawkins seems to belong to a small “sect” which includes Christopher Hitchens, the former Nation correspondent who capitulated to the war-hawks but retains a totally imcompatible (with most war hawks) point of view on religion, expressed in his provocative title, God Is Not Great. I think both books are great fun in their merciless unmasking of those who, with a solemn and perfectly straight face, embrace perfectly nonsensical ideas. They do not spare the “respectable” middle of the road church-goer their mocking analysis as they challenge societal assumptions about belief. Dawkins is particularly annoyed at the near-requirement that we must “respect” those who “faithfully” refuse to question whomever reaches them first, the religion they’re raised under. He even suggests that to indoctrinate children into religious belief is a form of abuse.

I get frequent emails from “faith-based” groups requesting signatures for anti-war petitions, which I sign with some trepidation since I have zero faith, in the sense that the “faithful” seem to embrace. I agree with Dawkins’ question, why should believing nonsense without question give more weight to my opinion?

Politicians are frequently pressured by fundamentalists to throw them a bone, like the “under God” addition to the pledge of allegiance, or the movement to “put God back in our schools” – meaning, force all students to endure religious indoctrination. I always try to point out to those who complain that we can no longer pray in school that any student can pray anytime they want to, they just can’t force everyone else to join them. And that is the point Dawkins gets most agitated about, the forcing of unquestioned “faith” that he sees as extremely tiresome, yes, but also dangerous, as illustrated by doctor-killing anti-abortion fanatics (I won’t accede to their propaganda brigade by calling their position pro-life) and of course the jihadist, if that’s what they’re called, martyrs of 911. Dawkins sees this refusal to question, faith, as at the center of what the church teaches, needs to teach to perpetuate itself – otherwise it would become science, but which prepares the ground nicely for the scourge of demagoguery and war. I don’t think Dawkins has the whole picture here but he’s got a good bit of it.

Arrival: Crime Fiction set in Atlanta

2011-05-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

This is a promo of my first crime-fiction novel:

Whatever brought musician/artist Mellifluous LaRue fleeing south, alone and embittered, involved heavy drugs. Observing a transaction in a greasy spoon, the Tater Haus, she offers her free-lance services to the police. Betrayed immediately by a bent cop, a serendipitous conversation brings the now gun-shy entrepreneur to Pete Malvasio, an honest Atlanta narcotics officer. Mell begins to bring in those elusive bucks.

The chief villain, Jaime Montecarlos, oversees a small illegal-substance importing operation. A local Capo from the New York Mafia, already frustrated by his failure to collect a percentage of BMF (Black Mafia Family) income, demands a cut of Jaime’s. The bought cop, he who betrayed Mell earlier, precariously balances loyalty to the Mafia with a side relationship to the Latino faction.

Jaime seriously wounds Pete’s spouse Leigh in his first attempt on Mell, finding her through the bent cop. Mell and Pete, seeking revenge on a rainy night stumble upon plans for a large pending shipment that will lead to the book’s climax.

So the tale of Mell’s unconventional career move is interwoven with her European travel stories, songs, a comic strip with a political angle (Hinson & Haze - two characters who live on the road, she a feminist, he a bookish intellectual), as well as the story of a tragically interrupted relationship in the hill country of eastern Kentucky that drove her to the dubious sanctuary of Atlanta.

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=3066130
or search tom ferguson http://www.lulu.com

Folly part 2. Obama's War

2011-05-15T17:38:00.001-07:00

Parts four and five of Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly deal with British folly leading up to and through the U.S. Revolution and U.S. folly leading up to and through the Vietnam War. The cases are, folly-wise, very similar. In both instances there were those pointing out that costs would far outweigh any possible gains and that the justifications for policy were specious. Some of those pointing this out still supported the folly, in Britain’s case refusing to allow democracy in the colonies and going to war and in the U.S. instance, well… the same.

In the U.S. case public rhetoric was of the “freedom and democracy” line we all know so well when in fact democracy was thwarted at every turn, from rigging elections, coups and murder to ignoring overwhelming Vietnamese desire for an end to war regardless of which party would be the victor (see Daniel Ellsberg’s memoir, Secrets). Johnson would proclaim on national television, in his best Texas accent, “We’re not goin to turn tail and run.” Well “we” eventually did but way too many lives later, way too many barrels of agent orange and land mines, still plaguing the country I understand. According to The Pentagon Papers, released by the true patriot Ellsberg, the country was temporarily divided into north and south after the French defeat. The Geneva Accords called for elections to unify the country but since the U.S. didn’t approve of the most popular candidate, Ho Chi Mihn, elections were scuttled. So the “democracy” we were supposedly fighting for was at hand from day one. It wasn’t the evil Communists who scuttled it but those speaking most loudly, out of both sides of their mouths, about falling dominoes and the threat of tyranny etc;

Apparently the Obama Administration read neither The Pentagon Papers nor The March of Folly for in the very first meeting to discuss Afghanistan, according to Woodward’s book, Obama’s War, the President opened the meeting with the question, “Does anyone want to get out? (of Afghanistan)” Silence. Obama’s next comment was, “So, we’re done with that.” Even if you didn’t agree that we should get out (turn tail and run?) you would think it deserved a little more discussion that that. But then that’s how folly marches on.

Eternal Vigilance

2011-05-09T07:37:00.000-07:00

The price of liberty? According to Thomas Jefferson, that goes under the heading. eternal vigilance, probably the exact opposite of patriotism, or, depending on definitions, the exact same thing. When President Richard Nixon was getting vigilated he tried to change the subject by using the phrase, “Let’s talk about what’s right with America.” Another phrase comes to mind in response, Patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel.

If we-the-people were to take Jefferson’s admonition serious how would we protect liberty? Would we accept our government:

* Curtailing liberty in the form of the Orwellian-named Patriot Act?

* Granting “socialist” bail-outs to Wall Street banks, the very entities that have vigorously opposed “socialism” for the people?

* Consistently supporting anti-democratic elites abroad behind a wall of patriotic and fear-based rhetoric?

* Using military power and illegal war to dominate other nations?

* Establishing a judiciary that increasingly empowers anti-democratic forces at home?

* Allowing same anti-democratic forces to increasingly control the media and educational
institutions?

* Allowing same anti-democratic forces to undermine and dominate the political process through campaign contributions and “dirty tricks” – to include vulnerable-to-hacking electronic voting machines?

* Prioritizing profit for the few over citizen well-being and environmental health?

* Opening the U.S. Treasury as a virtual ATM machine to defense contractors and other elite campaign contributors?

* Promoting expensive, vulnerable and dangerous nuclear power over benign alternatives?

* Continuing suicidal policies around nuclear weapons, such as launch-on-warning, and their proliferation?

* And that ain’t all!

Or would we apply a little vigilance, and a little resistance?

Ego and the Nation State

2011-05-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

Eckhart Tolle uses the word Ego to describe a conceptual identity, created in the mind and maintained there by a more or less constant stream of thought, thoughts about past and future events, mundane or extraordinary, triumph and defeat and the positive/negative emotions accompanying them. This is what many people see as themselves, the Ego passing through time grasping for pleasure, attention, praise, acknowledgement, success, fame, money, power, safety, refuge domination and above all thinking thinking thinking.

Parallel and complementary to this conceptual identity is the Nation-State. We are encouraged to identify with an entity that may exist geographically but is more a communal mental construct marked by a flag, national anthem, economic theory, a story – founding fathers, defining wars of defense or liberation, evolving values etc;

Both of these interacting conceptual identities, to perpetuate themselves, are invested in convincing you that they ARE you. Tolle claims that this is the heart of dysfunction, luring us down a path toward extinction. The Ego is a short-term thinker, interested only in its own immediate maintenance, safety and glory. Consequences beyond the short term are not relevant, thus the life system is a dumping ground for poisonous chemicals, the population grows without regard to sustainability, fairness and justice are obstacles to gratification.

The Nation State is the communal version of the Ego. Individuals within this setting are variously captured by Ego thus the conflict between those who on whatever level, intuite or recognize the ego-guided drift toward catastrophe and those locked in denial. For the latter, recognizing the threat would require behavioral change not acceptable to Ego - completely rational for it is the ego who will need to go extinct in order for homo sapien to avoid that fate. A shift in the ratio of time spent in mind chatter versus consciousness, is necessary, a shift from domination by thought/emotion toward an awakened state of presence. This shift is toward reality for the only reality is now – past and future are thoughts and thought, though it is a useful tool, as master is an obstacle to experiencing life beyond the narrow mental construct. Beyond the mental construct is an interconnected reality whose profound beauty is accessible only via presence, which feeling awareness dissolves the ferocious values of a fear-based culture.

We-the-People-as-vendors

2011-04-24T19:43:00.000-07:00

In our Northern American society citizens are vendors, business persons. You have to sell something to make a living. The only product most of us have to market is our time/energy, our labor, which we sell to the highest bidder. Education and skill improve our competitive position as employees. Employers increase profits when they reduce or keep wages low. Most of us drudge away our sales day, at best making the best of it. Failure at or refusal to engage in business has serious consequences - the street being the ultimate enforcer, the bottom line.
So our life-blood is traded for whatever level of food, shelter, education, health care and entertainment, we can attain. But suppose these were givens, the goal in fact of our society as a whole, for all, instead of enrichment of the few, the clever and the ruthless?
Suppose we set out as a nation to solve this riddle: how to create a society whose top priority is the basics (food, shelter, education, health care) for every citizen, at a sustainable level - one which doesn't despoil the earth, air, soil, water? This as the driving force of our culture, to replace the current one, pursuit of profits, privilege and power.
If this attempt were made anywhere else and showed the least chance of success it would be crushed, as it was in Nicaragua, Chile and other countries, by the United States. This explains U.S. hostility toward Cuba as well. It is Cuba’s anti-capitalism, not its lack of democracy that upsets U.S. rulers. Change has to happen here and before the momentum of patriarchal capitalism finally consolidates its power internationally.
It will happen when we elect state and national governments, and courts, who embrace these values. That can only happen if we-the- people first adopt them, which can only happen through grass roots education, which we best be about. Well, there is another means to this, subject for another post. It is to be found, not exclusively but clearly, in the teachings of Eckhart Tolle.

Panthers and Police, Police and Panthers

2011-04-10T15:47:00.000-07:00

The book, Savage City (2011), T.J. English, examines New York City over the period 1963-73, using three individuals as a device for walking us through that period. George Whitmore, a naïve and innocent young black man, is viciously framed by the police and D.A. for crimes he very obviously didn’t commit; Dhoruba Bin Wahad not so innocently is also framed, basically for being a Black Panther; Bill Phillips is a super-corrupt cop who, like his more famous and honest contemporary Serpico, becomes a super-snitch. He is also, ironically, framed. The book’s focus is really massive police corruption and virulent racism. The Panthers would never have existed without the daily harassment, humiliation and routine injustice of the men in blue and their near-impregnable blue wall of silence.

The Black Panthers represented a reaction to oppression, on the street, in the job place, in housing and to a systemic discrimination that made daily life hell for most black citizens across the country. The success of the civil rights movement in the south helped northern black communities realize that passivity was not the only option. But the cities were populated by young men, such as Malcolm, Dhoruba, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton, who had spent hard time in youth gangs and prison. This was an education that did not recognize the merit of non-violence. In fact such a strategy was equated with cowardice, just as it was on the mean streets and in the prison system.

A friend of mine tells the story of returning to visit his south Georgia hometown after an extended stay in Boston and joining his father and friends at their club. After enduring an evening of casual racist jokes and hawkish Vietnam platitudes (along with way too much Southern Comfort) my friend announced to these Southern Gentlemen that the U.S. was doing to the Vietnamese in Southeast Asia just what they were doing to blacks here at home. A Father/Son fistfight was narrowly averted. Southern organizers recognized that to challenge the oppressor in their comfort zone of violence, was suicidal. The basic law of karma, that violence begets violence, that actions have consequences, that it all comes back on you, what goes around comes around etc; is ignored at our peril. Noam Chomsky recently stated that when you want to create change you have to consider whether your actions will actually move things in the desired direction. Will breaking windows help or will it only give you the feeling that you’re doing something? That the Black Panthers were ultimately destroyed testifies to the futility of one aspect of their strategy, the fatal mistake of dismissing non-violence. Would that the criminals who, in the main, run U.S. foreign policy, would take this lesson to heart.

Choosing Choices

2011-04-03T13:27:00.000-07:00

It’s easy to excuse oneself from the citizen responsibility of voting with the fact that no election is won by a single vote. If large numbers of people follow this line, well, we have what we have now, low voter turn-out. Still, one vote, something comes up, can’t make it, doesn’t really matter. Now with corporations endowed with the status of persons, by the wisdom of our pretty much Reagan-Bush-appointed Supreme Court, is created a whole class of very rich and thus very influential persons. We have a new ball game here, or maybe just an on-steroids version of what we used to have. A topic certainly worthy of exploration and vigorous opposition. This anti-democratic decision needs over-turning. Maybe even impeachment for instead of protecting us from all enemies foreign and domestic, the Supreme Court has delivered us into their lusty hands. But my point here is making choices, how that impacts what goes on.

There is a movement to boycott Wal-Mart, to make this person accountable for unfair labor practices, sexism in the work place and driving wages and benefits downward. So shopping at Wal-Mart supports these practices, choosing to boycott goes the other way. Buying your gas is another opportunity to influence behavior. The Venezuelan state-owned oil company Citgo, it is argued, disperses its profits in socially beneficial ways as opposed to the other oil giants whose profits help perpetuate the growing income divide and bolster anti-democratic measures in the form of electoral influence from these corporate persons.

A friend of mine militantly advocates vegetarianism using a three-pronged argument: For the Animals; For Your Health; For the Environment, hoping that one of the three will hook her potential recruit. Under these three headings then she presents the impact of a meat diet on the animals, especially the notorious factory farm style raising and harvesting where miserable and cruel conditions that would truly shock the average meat eater are routine. The health impact arguments are of the heart attack/stroke/cancer cultivating nature of meat-eating, batting down the usual response that “I need my protein!” by pointing out that protein is way over-present in meat and is abundant in vegetarian diets. The meat addict gets a list of the numerous meat-like substitutes available, veggie burgers etc; For the environmental argument she presents information such as the methane and other pollutants released unsustainably into the environment. She also cites the inefficiency of growing great quantities of corn (70%) and grain for animal consumption – takes something like 15 pounds of corn to produce one pound of meat. Great acreage could be freed to reduce the stress on wild animal populations from urban encroachment. Humans are not the only animals on this planet but they are granted few rights. They stand in the wood, at the edge of our fields, observing with trepidation the choices we make. Try this for more details: www.vegsource.com/news/2009/09/how-to-win-an-argument-with-a-meat-eater.html

Three Threats

2011-03-27T11:37:00.001-07:00

We face three threats to our longevity as a species and all grow out of the dysfunction of ego: Pollution, Over-Population and Nuclear (and other) WMD

Global climate change will be minimally very disruptive and could escalate way beyond the worst case scenarios of only a few years ago: rising seas, epidemics of old and new diseases, agricultural catastrophe, shifting currents drastically changing climate, unprecedented refugee dislocations and more. On top of the climate change situation apparently chiefly caused by deforestation and the dumping of carbon into the atmosphere, there is the dumping of toxic chemicals into the air, soil and water, the loss of topsoil, the poisoning and depletion of the oceans, the extinction of species.

The planet, in some estimates, can sustain a population of 150,000,000 at a U.S. lifestyle. Obviously, at six billion and climbing, we are way beyond that and something’s got to give. The high-consumption portion of world population must make serious adjustments as must the population-escalating portion. The adjustments might be voluntary if the crisis is fully recognized, and soon. If not they will be involuntary.

Nuclear weapons, as well as other clever yet-to-be-developed (or perhaps just not yet public) Weapons of Mass Destruction, have the potential to kill millions and render large areas uninhabitable for long periods. The proliferation of these weapons is on-going and encouraged by intransigence on the part of the nations already in possession, hesitant to give up what they mistakenly view as security or advantage. Nuclear power plants are pre-positioned nuclear devices to a serious terrorist and helpful ingredients in the making of nuclear weapons. There are more than 10,000 nuclear warheads, some on hair-trigger alert and hundreds of nuclear plants with full-time cheerleaders committed to promoting the technology. Radiation is increasingly, routinely, entering our planet’s life system. Radiation is a carcinogen.

Madness you say? You would be not mistaken. All of this suicidal behavior is driven by fear which is created by the mistaken belief that we are not intricately interwoven into the web of life but rather are alternately masters or potential victims of an indifferent and violent order. The nurturer of this bleak view is the ego, a pseudo entity that will sacrifice whatever it takes to find momentary safety and maintain the illusion of its own importance and reality. How to escape Ego? Take a breath, let it out; there you are.

(NRC) Nuclear Regulatory Collusion

2011-03-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

On Monday 3/21 an official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) explained to us, via NPR news, that we needn’t worry about radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. NRC’s mission is to protect the public by ensuring that nuclear power plants in the U.S. operate as safely as possible. There are several worrisome factors that would lead us to question NRC credibility, as much as we’d like to believe their assuring pronouncements:

• The nuclear industry funds the NRC – can you say collusion of interest?
• The NRC has never turned down a license extension request from a reactor that has reached the end of its original operating life (this week they renewed a 40 year old reactor in Vermont for another twenty years)
• NRC has a history of ignoring or downplaying safety violations, for example ignoring a leak that had been going on since 1993 at Indian Point, a plant nearer New York City than Tokyo is to Fukushima; ignored regulations requiring releases of radioactively contaminated air be via controlled and monitored pathways at Vermont Yankee; there are others and these are only for 2010 according to a Union of Concerned Scientists annual report in which NRC also did some things right (see www.ucsusa.org).
• The day before 911 the NRC determined that the possibility of an airliner crashing into a reactor was so remote that it needn’t be considered in safety review. Many think a reactor was the target of the failed hi-jacked airliner of 911.
• Attempts to infiltrate mock-terrorists onto nuclear sites over the years were successful 50% of the time despite reactor security knowing the dates of these tests in advance.
• NRC staff embrace the flawed, potentially deadly belief, that an extremely dangerous process of boiling water, leaving extremely long-lived radioactive waste can be “safe” even when safety regulations are ignored and benign alternatives are available.
• NRC and other nuclear advocates constantly give assurances that certain scary outcomes are so unlikely as to be virtually impossible and when they do happen (think Japan, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl) there is a gathering of the wagons to defend the industry that resembles the denial surrounding alcoholic addiction.
• Anti-nuke groups warned against the decision to build nuclear plants in Georgia, their arguments and warnings ignored but their concerns about cost, safety and alternatives confirmed, item by item, in the end. This doesn’t seem to figure in Georgia Power’s recent decision to once again overrule these same objections to the same pro-nuke mind-set (denial is not a river in Egypt).
• President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future includes exactly zero anti-nuclear advocates.

Keeping in mind that official weather reports in heavily nuke-committed France falsely reported wind patterns to the public showing radiation from Chernobyl by-passing France, that the scenario still being played out in Japan was considered impossible by our nuclear geniuses, are assurances from industry bedfellows to be uncritically bought? Or might it be wiser to adopt a philosophy of Buyer Beware!

Meditation

2011-03-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

Painting: Coffee House Napkin Drawing, oil on canvas, Tom Ferguson

When I first encountered the idea of meditation it picked my interest, yet I got nowhere when I tried it out. Aside from being boring(!) I found that my mind raced with ideas, memories, things to do, unfinished business, when I was expecting some kind of esoteric experience. Once I even became quite frightened and thought, hey, is that it?, remembering maybe that scary line from my religious indoctrination, that no one can look upon the face of God and live. Understanding the practice, much later, as a means to becoming present, abiding in that deeply rooted state, as Tolle describes it, clarified what I found intuitively appealing. Joi de vivre is the real face of God, not the Biblical projection of fear.

My most profound experiences, given this understanding, can be explained as having entered into the state of presence. I once burst into tears before a Van Gogh, in the Toledo Museum of Art and just as unexpectedly broke down at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. and as I witnessed and caught my daughter’s slippery, primeval womb exit. I stood on the chilly December shores of Lake Superior anticipating a sunrise, the intensity of my consciousness gradually increasing until the sun’s appearance was accompanied by a metaphoric crescendo of a thousand voice chorus in the clouds; staring out the window of a European train watching the world unfold; captivated by a passage of Chopin; delighted by a Beatle riff, a flourish of paint, a flattened tin can, a splatter of rain against the window, reading/writing words that seem to magically materialize and cohere and express something true, at the heart of reality, doing the same visually with line and color – all moments of awareness, of felt interconnection, interrupting a dysfunctional stream of mind-chatter that otherwise dominates and subdues the joy of being.

What unites these experiences is that they occur in that gap in mindstream called presence, triggered by some intense or novel experience. They are also colored by the confusion and fear that a belief common to our culture engenders, the belief that we are separate and vulnerable, isolated individuals. When the contrary and self-evident fact that we are interconnected is felt, not thought, confusion and fear dissipate, replaced by a state characterized by a feeling of peace and joie de vivre with the depth of those feelings potentially fathomless and referenced throughout history in terms like mystical, cosmic, peak experience, godhead, expansive continuum, etc;

That felt interconnection is awareness, of being. The feelers via which we experience go deep and wide. If we are absolutely interconnected then we feel the full reach of physical reality, the inseparable and simultaneous layers of past, future and most profoundly, the ground of being out of which the illusion of form flows. In this state we dwell en-joy and we are moved to acts of creativity in the dance of life.

Jolly Ol' Folly

2011-03-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

I’ve been reading Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly (1984). Current events too numerous to list would very nicely qualify by her criterion to be included in the pageant: building nuclear power plants on earthquake faults; building nuclear power plants at all when benign alternatives are available and economically competitive; going for the golden greed award in a democracy, expecting people to be fooled all the time; taking actions to address terrorism that increase terrorism (violence begets violence); despoiling the biological system on which we depend for sustenance; seeking permanent psychological and physical safety and security in a corrupt, utterly and patently illusory social-political-religious paradigm.

Tuchman’s book begins its survey of folly with Troy and advances through the 3-4 popes presiding over the worst excesses of the Papacy, ironically during the Renaissance, enumerating very worldly, sometimes bizarre and certainly decadent church doings to include orgy, torture and murder, inter-city squabbles, alliances and betrayals with France, Spain and Germany all at a time when some of the greatest art of western culture was being created. Tuchman goes on to document the loss of the colonies by totally avoidable British folly, then on to the colony’s subsequent Vietnam folly. History offers far more examples than Tuchman is able to deal with in one volume but her point is made, namely that pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest, her definition of folly, has been with us and we can expect, surprise, to see it’s ugly head raised with the usual frequency in future. The lesson is hardly academic since we must live with the consequences and in a democracy we have opportunity to participate in perpetuating foolishness or stand in opposition.

Big 'D' Democracy

2011-03-08T16:56:00.000-08:00

When you lay out a continuum of possible political points of view and compare it to the range of opinion in U.S. mainstream media it is clear that a narrow spectrum dominates, roughly Center or Corporate-right to Hysterical Right. Another way of saying it is that the greater, or at least a significant band of opinion, is excluded from the national dialogue. What then can only be called a propaganda system insists, relentlessly, that freedom and democracy are inseparable. What is meant by freedom in this sleight of hand, is capitalism, the favored value, trumping at all times democracy, which term is utilized not for its actual practice but in order to coopt its prestige. An obvious instance of this deception is in the workplace. If democracy is our highest value why is it not practiced where most of us spend half of our waking time? This question of course never arises in mainstream “debate”, chief proselytizer for the free market.

In private discussion however one can find libertarians and right wing ideologues scurrying to obscure the issue by claiming that we are a republic not a democracy! Or that the masses are not smart or well-informed enough to trust democracy. Well then, why not pair capitalism with republicanism in our slogans? Not quite as catchy, from a marketing point of view. And it begs the question, what does it mean? The answer, a system that allows a tiny elite of wealthy individuals and corporations to run things, an oligarchy actually, isn’t going to draw a lot of majority support so less insightful terms must be substituted. I think it was Jefferson who said that if the people are not sufficiently educated then educate them. If the choice is between education and throwing out democracy I modestly propose that we transfer a couple hundred billion dollars from the war machine towards true security.

Health Care or Health Scam?

2011-02-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

In a 4/27 meeting at Atlanta Friends Meeting House, organized by Healthcare Now, Philadelphian Katie Robbins spoke and led a spirited discussion on the state of organizing for Single-Payer healthcare. Vermont is in the lead nation-wide, a bill there being very close to passage but without a funding mechanism as yet. California has twice passed a single payer bill, twice vetoed by former Governor Schwarzcoph… or is that Schwarzenegger? With a new Governor, Jerry Brown, there could be hope in California, though Brown may have succumbed to the lure of born-again fiscal conservativism since his last term.

Katie introduced the acronym PISD (private insurance-induced stress disorder) offering the antidote, National Health Insurance. The situation is one of crisis to which Republicans offer denial and the Democrats tend to go along with their timid party head in the white house. House Bill 676 would expand and improve medicare, improving by eliminating co-pays, deductibles and expanding by eliminating the millions of uninsured by lowering the age requirements to minus 9 months – medicare for all, in a word. Since the situation is in crisis and systemic and what has become known as Obama-care, though bringing some improvements, is ultimately inadequate, we will have this debate again and it is important to have in place some single payer models, hopefully Vermont and/or California, for that discussion, though of course the Canadian, Western European and Australian models didn’t help on the first go-around.

Activist nurses and doctors, responding to the shut-out of single payer advocates in finance committee testimony, forced a small opening by their disruption of the meetings. This small opening still left the insurance industry dominating the debate and resulted in the tepid Obama-care.

HR 676, the United States National Healthcare Act, would basically put the insurance companies out of business. It is estimated that administration costs under the private system is 30% whereas medicare administrative cost is 3%. The nations with single payer also have low admin costs. Estimated saving for this bill are around $400 billion. Funding sources are obviously the bloated military budget, especially Iraq/Afghanistan, and the cap on social security tax which sits at $106,000, for no apparent reason other than that ideologues opposed to social security and medicare want it that way. Katie points out that single payer is a financing mechanism as well as a way to democratize health care. This last point probably helps to explain corporate opposition. It strikes many as strange that corporations oppose single payer since they would experience significant cost saving when no longer responsible for their worker’s health insurance. Being top-down tyrannies, apparently they feel threatened by any form of democracy.

Despite polls that show a healthy majority favor it, despite the cost-savings and improved health effects, single payer has been off the table since the discussion began, considered not politically viable. This says something about our democracy when a policy favored by the majority is considered not viable. It suggests that forces other than the people are who count – but we already knew this.

Classy Catering

2011-02-22T12:02:00.000-08:00

The billionaires and other wealthy ideologues who fund right wing think tanks, Carl Rove, the Tea Party etc; seem to be experimenting, curious as to how far they can push their agenda before encountering real opposition. Not so long ago I would have ventured that they would envy dictators their free hand. There might be a little nervousness these days in U.S. country clubs, given Egyptian developments, though it may be reasoned that, what with owning the media where the majority of people get their information, and funding (owning) most politicians of both parties there seems little reason for alarm. Even if all else fails they’ve still got the police and military, right? The governor of Wisconsin has threatened to call out the National Guard to quell resistance to his anti-worker policies. Perhaps he should consider the Egyptian military response to similar demands and also the fact that most national guard troops are themselves workers.

Greed is said to explain why billionaires want more money and the same can probably be said for why capitalists pretty much running and owning everything attempt to cut back on what little workers have managed to garner. But I suppose it’s a long-term project. When the capitalist class saw, to its dismay, that it couldn’t completely stop workers from successfully organizing in the early twentieth century, it attempted to undermine the movement by negotiating with more “moderate” unions, buying them off, inviting the leadership to the golf course etc; all the while biding its time until a counter attack could be launched. Reagan’s ascendancy marked that moment and it has been downhill for workers ever since but greed may yet unravel that victory as the people of Wisconsin stand up in a very tardy but hopeful opposition.

Manic Logic

2011-02-10T10:32:00.000-08:00

Distilling William Greider’s dense, 573 page book, One World, Ready or Not down into a few words: we live in an economy that requires that we chase money, one way or the other. Those most successful in this chase get to make the rules, or at least they use their considerable influence to arrange things so that they and theirs remain on top of this game.

The compulsory climb seems to be entirely captivating but it unfortunately occurs to very few of those achieving the peaks that a rule change toward sharing and equality could end massive suffering. Those who lack elementary needs - food, clean water, shelter - are compelled to join the chase or perish, and those whose every physical need is not only met but delivered by hordes of obsequious servants, act as though their lives too are at risk should they abandon the quest or call for change. In nations where endless competitive striving has been softened by a safety net of hard-won worker and citizen rights, The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (Greider’s sub-title) relentlessly forces roll-back.

Greider provides depressing examples of the bloody hand of the Free Market repressing workers and despoiling environment across the globe where even reluctant CEOs of major corporations are caught in a desperate race to the bottom in terms of wages (not theirs of course though their company’s survival is in the balance) and environmental protection. Corporations pursue the lowest paid, most subservient workers and compliant governments in a competitive, mobile frenzy that will clearly end in a glut of products with no one left to buy them in a despoiled environment in which no one could, or would want to, live. Democracy and national sovereignty are devoured in this rapacious gluttony, despite flowery rhetoric aligning capitalism with “freedom”, delivered by deluded zealots and their media minions. Yet Democracy is the only avenue of escape from this escalating mania for we are perfectly capable of changing the rules. The means to that shift lies in an old slogan (understanding that we are all workers), “Workers of the world, Unite!”

The Shrewdest of Bargainers

2011-02-04T11:54:00.001-08:00

Some pundits explain away U.S. installation and/or support for heinous criminal dictators all over the planet as just the goofy bumbling of well-meaning good ol’ boys. Others recognize that the policies are deliberately crafted decisions meant to further U.S. (read corporate) interests.

Just so, some consider Obama a poor and naïve bargainer outmaneuvered by right wing republicans and bankers. Continuing the parallel, others suggest that when Obama gives up the public option, medicare for all, in exchange for a watered down health plan that primarily benefits insurance companies, when he grants more or less permanent tax cuts for the rich and throws the unemployed a meager temporary extension of unemployment payments, when he protects Israeli disregard for basic human rights and expansion while lecturing Venezuela about democracy, when he decides to “look forward”, ignoring high crimes and misdemeanors of the previous administration and sends his FBI to harass and intimidate peace workers… with such a consistent record one could be forgiven for suspecting that, far from bungling, these policies reflect the real world values of a paid up member of the class that rules.

Capitalism, a Love Story, a film

2011-01-28T09:59:00.000-08:00

Michael Moore's film, Capitalism: A Love Story, is just as funny as its title and just as veil-lifting as his previous films have been on their subjects.

Wrapping crime-scene tape around Goldman-Sachs and other Wall Street Pirates is a hilarious and incisive gesture and looking closely at some of the victims of the predator culture brings home the criminality of some of what happens when the bottom line is all that matters. An interview excerpt with an influential columnist with the Wall Street Journal pretty much says it all - the writer takes the usual propaganda device of associating capitalism with democracy and drops the latter component as unnecessary and in-the-way. The Constitutional guarantee and exhortation to seek happiness can apparently be completely satisfied by chasing money.

Speaking of Goldman-Sachs they, according to Moore, are amply represented, indeed are indistinguishable from the government, especially under the Bush Administration, at least when it comes to the treasury and economic policies. But they were there also in force under Clinton, the first Bush and certainly with a vengeance under (over!) Reagan - the Hollywood actor hired by Bankers and other lesser Capitalists to represent their interests. The film confirms that most of the congress and anyone with any chance of getting anywhere near the presidency are employed by the same forces in the form of campaign contributions and shared ideology. Across all these administrations Wall Street sociopaths can be seen moving - into government, shifting a few rules (deregulate), back to Wall Street, make some more money, back to government, tweak it abit (deregulate) and serenely count profits while the economy melts down. The appointment of Larry Summers as his chief economic adviser demonstrates that Obama-the-reformer has in no way escaped the clutches of this cabal. Maybe the change he was talking about was in Oval Office decor (to give him his due, the Woodward book, Obama's War, claims that "enhanced interrogation" techniques and rendition have ended under Obama, a change worth the 10 minutes it took to vote).

The stormtrooper right routinely lies, makes stuff up, distorts data, all to discredit what it perceives as the enemy, usually socialism. They have to since to honestly present their view, that the wealthy should rule, would discredit themselves. So I hate to see Michael Moore use their tactics, even in a minor way, which I'm afraid he does in a segment where he presents airline pilots, deep in debt from their training, underpaid and working part-time jobs outside their profession to make ends meet. For many students in the U.S. this is a sad but true tale but the film implies (by using a visual of a large major airliner while citing the statistics) that pilots make less than $20,000 a year when in fact this figure is only true for the commuter airlines and part-time pilots. Moore, under constant attack by the right, should not give his critics ammunition.

Moore includes in his film something he discovered in South Carolina, lost footage of President Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union Address. In his talk Roosevelt suggested that the nation needed to implement a second "bill of rights". His argument was that the "political rights" guaranteed by the constitution and the Bill of Rights had "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness." Roosevelt's remedy was to declare an "economic bill of rights" which would guarantee:

* Employment, with a living wage,
* Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies,
* Housing,
* Medical care,
* Education, and,
* Social security

Roosevelt believed that these rights would guarantee U.S. security, and that our place in the world depended upon how far these and similar rights had been carried into practice. Unfortunately Roosevelt died before he could use his immense popularity to bring this vision to fruition. The film leaves that task to us.

The Religious/Existentialist Marriage

2011-01-14T16:29:00.000-08:00

Conscious Indian, oil on canvas, 1984 Tom Ferguson (detail, collection Patty & Patrick Brennan)

The meaning of the word God, in my neighborhood during my formative years was conventional, literal biblical, bearded guy in the sky taking notes, who’s been naughty, who’s been nice. This got challenged, or should I say devastated, when I walked into a design class in art school conducted by Myron Kozman, Think Richard Dawkins mischievously assailing received wisdom.

The usual response to new information is either denial or paradigm adjustment. My old neighborhood would have chosen the former. Migrating from working class to bohemia made the latter choice feasible for me, still received wisdom I suppose but more thought out this time: Existentialism – Dylan’s line in Visions of Joanna played its supporting role, “We’re all sitting here stranded, doing our best to deny it.” As did Sartre’s learn to think clearly; think clearly about good and evil; do good. In this bleak paradigm there is no God at all, no supernatural. Earth is a rock in space, isolated individuals are subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune, and the nets of chance… and especially there is indifference, even hostility, from a dead backdrop and a ruthlessly competitive life system.

Glimpses of an enlarged, more appealing perspective appeared, in the form of Eastern thought, Buddhism and Hinduism, delivered by Hesse, Huxley, Alan Watts, LSD and The Beatles but these remained occasional, not always consistent, hazy if intense glimpses until Eckhart Tolle’s books brought the various strands into an unprecedented clarity. Others may have arrived at this view before Tolle, and as clearly but I’m not aware of them (Huxley’s book Island comes close). And the point is the view, not who gets credit for it.

The three phases I’m describing, that I went through, could be thought to be incompatible, irreconcilably antagonistic, or they could be seen as paraphrasing each other, pointing at the same thing. The language of Christianity (or any other religion) could be metaphoric, standing for or pointing at a difficult to describe reality. Existentialism could be seen to be pointing directly at the reality itself. Both views must jettison some baggage to arrive at a happy marriage: Religion must recognize the Mythology of its language; Existentialism must quit its pessimistic and arbitrary conclusion that reality is horrifying. When the marriage is consummated we are in the Great NOW where the barricade of mind chatter is set aside, leaving a non-narrative presence, a felt recognition of interconnection, of Oneness, with its healing component, the peace, as the preacher says, that passeth all understanding.

Tea Time

2011-01-06T11:27:00.001-08:00

Serve some crumpets with that unreality virus hitting our congress. A mixed metaphor but in zany times like this there are new rules. Orwell would be amused. Grassroots now means any number of people recruited by public relations experts hired by billionaires to convince said persons that their interests align with the funders. Some focus-group derived rhetoric required. Any gathering no matter how small will have first rate sound systems, local right-wing celebrities, sometimes national versions of same, tuned to the focus-group data, and lavish media promotion and coverage. The slogan Take Back Our Country appeals to a certain brand of disenfranchised and argues at the same time that our country has indeed been taken, implying that we had it in the previous administration which again would impress Orwell.

Bryan Burrough, in his book The Big Rich, documents how Texas oil millionaires distorted our democracy by funding right wing candidates, not just in their home state but across the country, and targeting any politician they deemed too “liberal” (communist!). Their efforts helped bring us the red-scare 50s. So today. We’ve lost an honest, compassionate voice in the senate with Russ Feingold’s defeat to a tea-party stalwart worthy of Joseph McCarthy. The people of Wisconsin seem to have forgotten that history. You may not be able to fool all of the people all of the time but you can come pretty close if you pump enough money, vitriol and unscrupulous but clever con artists into the electoral process. So here we are once again, having deviated slightly from the path to extinction, having thus pushed the hysteria button on those who have the wherewithal, motivation and inclination to get us back on track.

Moderation in All Things

2010-12-22T13:43:00.000-08:00

On one end of a continuum of theories of governance is Democracy, where the People rule. On the other is Plutocracy where the wealthy class calls the shots. In the public discussion of this polarization in the United States there are those who take a sort of middle position and confusedly think of themselves then as moderates. But is it a “moderate” position to compromise Democracy? The argument might be clarified if we put it in these terms: Democracy demands one person, one vote, Plutocracy demands rule by the rich and “moderation” offers a compromise where the vote is based on dollars, that is, one dollar, one vote. Somehow I don’t think this is what the Greek Philosopher had in mind, that moderation consists in taking a position sort of half way between the extremes. Not when these are false, set up to give the appearance that a violation of the principle of Democracy has parity with it, that Democracy is an extreme. Someone at the table declares they have a right to 100% of the meal so a “moderate” would accept that demand as valid but work out a compromise where that person ends up with only 90%. It is apparently unthinkable in respectable quarters of the U.S. but taking the view that a tiny minority should have disproportionate influence is an extremist position. It is the task of the mainstream media, on behalf of their wealthy and corporate owners, to obscure this simple fact.

Support the Troops Song & Dance

2010-12-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

The drawing came out of an experience I had at a night club. A Nashville singer-songwriter had a Support Our Troops sticker on his guitar and stated how proud he was of his nephew for serving in Iraq and urged us to Support the troops – I wanted to shout, “Bring’em home!” but I allowed myself to be intimidated into silence. That failure haunted me enough to try to compensate with the drawing. The text below was printed on the flip-side of the drawing, a pocket-sized flyer I would hand out to folks at demonstrations. When I saw Bush or Support our Troops bumper stickers in parking lots I’d leave one under the windshield wiper. The situation has changed somewhat with Obama’s ascendancy to the throne but the pressure to exercise the violence option is pretty intense, whether that pressure comes from the defense industry, patriarchal ideologues or from within one’s own psyche.

The Bush Administration lied about the reasons for invading Iraq, claiming:

* that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and intended to develop nuclear weapons.

* that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and was involved in 9/11

* Both of these rationales were discredited by the 911 Commission. Despite this the White House continued to portray the war on Iraq as a war against terrorism.

Administration officials advocated for invading Iraq long before 911 as part of their fantasies of empire. The real motives seem to lie here and in the oil riches of the region. War profiteering is a predictable bonus for the administration’s friends and allies in the Military and “Security” Industrial Complex. War is always an opportunity to shrink Democracy and accountability, highly favorable advantages when looting the treasury (since reading Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine I now assign this latter motive a more central role).

The Administration talked of “Freedom on the March” but that was transparent propaganda. Aside from the illegal invasion, measures contained in the Patriot Act and other Administration actions, such as ignoring a Supreme Court ruling on prisoner rights to legal representation, the torture scandal, dismissal of dissent at home and the alienation created by its arrogant relations to the world community put the lie to its pretense of promoting Democracy. The Wikileak revelations certainly support these contentions.

The Administration exploited fear of terrorism among the population to distract from its deeply undemocratic agenda. This agenda includes dangerous and expensive militarization, continued transfer of power and wealth to the already powerful and wealthy, and denial of environmental pollution that threatens the viability, even the survival, of our civilization. Administration policies harmed our standing in the world of nations and undermined our security by creating resentment and animosity toward our country. Obama, despite preposterous accusations (socialist, Islamicist, etc;), has made barely detectable change in Bush’s policies. The hysterical animosity toward him is amplified by Fox news, made easier by racism, the other mainstream news outlets and by his own betrayal of his base. The most zealous members of the ruling elite, via their media, reacting to modest reform as if it were revolution, are laying out a warning to all comers: threaten our privilege, profits and power, however mildly, and you will be demonized.

Know Thyself

2010-11-24T20:35:00.000-08:00

Arrival, oil painting by author, 48 x 60"

Some 2,500 years ago a city smaller than Atlanta produced painting,
sculpture, architecture, theater, poetry, literature and pottery which
stand as monumental foundation for the Art we experience around us in the
west today. In 1982 I stood before the Acropolis in Athens, awed at the
sophistication of a people whose technology was mightily primitive
compared to what has developed since. Yet they were able to construct an
incredibly advanced civilization which despite our tools, we merely echo.
Another aspect that we mirror is a missed opportunity: Instead of
building a just and gentle society providing all with basic necessities
and leisure to enjoy a creative, celebratory life, they constructed
impressive art and implements of war and domination (I know, I know,
Sparta was only a stone’s throw west).

In their invention of democracy however they laid a foundation for the
possibility which we have, so far, squandered. Until our time it
has been by and large a pleasant if utopian dream. With the development of
nuclear weapons, and a consuming population growing exponentially, that
utopia is an imperative that will emerge when we have put an end to war,
domination, injustice and environmental degradation. Imperative because,
if we are not successful we will perish in the uninhabitable environs of a
wasted life system, well underway.

Perhaps Greek’s greatest gift was the admonition Know Thyself, for that is
the means by which we might yet save ourselves. What do those two words
mean? If Self is consciousness then attending to one’s consciousness would be
following that dictum. This would mean becoming the observer, noting the
passing thoughts and emotions and noting also, they are not YOU… YOU are
the observer. Thus released from the captivity of those thoughts,
emotions… karma… one is ONESELF, the consciousness that exists in, indeed
IS , the great now, the eternal moment. That moment is not one of a series
but, as the eternal qualification indicates, is the core out of which the
temporal world emerges and recedes. Some traditions refer to this as
illusion, recognizing that what seems so physical and permanent is
an insubstantial if beautiful pageant, which felt knowledge frees one
to join the exhilarating dance of life.

Shock Doctrine - I'm shocked!

2010-11-17T19:06:00.000-08:00

This drawing was done in the early 80s when Reagan was using such terms to manipulate us, "Stay the course! If you're just patient, you'll see great prosperity. Any day now, trust me."

Naomi Klein has done us all a favor and lifted the veil that has hidden the manipulators of the levers of power, revealing a very disturbing reality. The ruling economic theory from the great depression to Reagan was Keynesian, a theory characterized by the notion that government should intervene to protect the people from the worst excesses of capitalism. With Reagan came the beginning of the ascendancy of the Chicago School of Economics in our fair land, led by Milton Friedman, a former fringe group that cleverly, and viciously, insinuated itself into a global movement. Characterizing itself as “pure capitalism” it sold a seductive elixir that promised prosperity for all, in the form of trickle down benefits, as an automatic result of a market freed from government regulation. Not surprisingly the Chicago School was heavily funded by large corporations.

Implementation of the theory, Disaster Capitalism as Klein puts it in her subtitle, is everywhere hindered by the resistance of those who will “initially” have to bear the pain of its enactment. The “initial” suffering in every case that it has been tried is actually permanent. When not permanent, that is invariably because its rules were thrown out. When throwing out the Chicago School rules created relief and an improvement in the economy the “Chicago Boys” did not hesitate to claim credit. In fact it was it’s earlier failure in the 1920-30s that nudged Keynesianism into being, partially at least as a reaction to the competing appeal of socialism, an idea that had not quite yet been totally demonized. The program is best introduced in dictatorships where the pesty population can be persuaded, using the usual methods, to stand out of the way. Failing that the next strategy is to have everything in place awaiting some crisis under cover of which the new rules can be quickly slipped in place. Notice how, for all the talk of “freedom”, the theory virtually requires extreme anti-democratic measures.

In her enlightening book Klein walks us through a thoroughly depressing series of successes for the “boys”: Chile, Argentina, Brazil, England, Poland, China, South Africa, Russia and of course the U.S., where Katrina and 911 were used as crisis leverage points by Friedman’s friend Paul Wolfowitz and the other, ah… vultures around W. Success in these cases is a bit different than the advertisement. It would seem that since the adherents proselytize relentlessly, with religious fervor, and since their “successes” always result in the impoverishment of the many and the enrichment of the few, and since they call this success, this must be their actual goal. But like the republican party and conservatives in general, a politician can’t very well state to the electorate, and expect to be elected, that, “When I’m elected I’ll work as hard as I can to bring back Fuedalism.” So seductive, flowery, and divisive rhetoric must obscure the betrayal until it is way too late.

Addiction?

2010-11-15T08:46:00.001-08:00

What’s on offer from the powers that be? Reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the U.S., one encounters a chronicle of class warfare - extremely wealthy individuals and, now, corporations, using their cash flow to distort democracy, targeting “liberals” and supporting “conservatives”. Those who might question or oppose, however mildly, complete domination by these funders, the “liberals”, and those who will zealously by-any-means-necessary pursue their agenda, the “conservatives” are locked in battle, with one side, the former, having support of the people they represent and the latter having the advantage of lavish funding. The lavish funding allows, via the media owned by said latter, indoctrination of the natural supporters of the former such that they come to see their friends as their enemies and their enemies as their friends. Thus the choice of “poison” ends up rather narrow and none of it very good for our future prospects as a species, who require clean water, soil, air and justice.

PSC Comments

2010-11-08T07:03:00.000-08:00

Citizen comment to the Georgia Public Service Commission, 11/8/2010, in opposition to a Georgia Power rate increase request.

There are many reasons to oppose pouring scarce public resources into nuclear projects:

1. the high cost of nuclear reactors, the long lead time to operation and the unacceptably high water usage and thermal pollution.

2. the fact that a nuclear plant to a terrorist, is a pre-positioned nuclear device that can create a sacrificial population and an immense dead zone.

3. Even without the terrorist factor, safety is problematic. Chernobyl proves that when an accident happens it can contaminate large areas for long periods. The planet’s circulation system of rivers, currents and wind patterns insure that contamination is not strictly local. A recent New York Academy of Science report puts the world-wide Chernobyl death count near one million, an assertion it would be criminal to ignore.

4. Since the early 1980s, just after reactors began operating in Maryland, Calvert County's cancer death rate jumped from 2 percent below to 16 percent above the state rate.

5. The more plutonium we create the greater the risk of proliferation. Policy-makers seem oblivious to this troubling fact, exhibiting a pathological, alcoholic-like denial.
Over 100 radioactive chemicals are created in reactors. Most is stored as waste, but some is released into local air and water on a routine basis. These cancer-causing chemicals enter human and wild-life bodies through air, food and water. Releasing these toxins into our delicate life system, and leaving what isn’t released to countless, unconsulted future generations to safeguard, can hardly be considered responsible, especially considering that there are benign alternatives.

6. Solar technology and wind generators suffer from none of these liabilities – no terrorist would have the least interest in them. No accident involving these sustainable technologies could conceivably threaten even small populations let alone the life system.

The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research has released a publication titled, Carbon-Free and Nuclear Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, as a book and a free download on their website www.IEER.org. This proposal persuasively details alternatives to dirty energy and could save us a great deal of suffering and wasted treasury. Please do not enable the addicted, oppose this rate increase.

Utopia Anyone?

2010-11-02T18:50:00.001-07:00

The city of Atlanta, along with the downtown business association, has been accused of conspiring to close the Task Force for the Homeless, a facility that as many as 700 homeless men depend on. The Task Force backs up and takes overflow from other shelters. Criticism of the Task Force includes, in my experience, “They’re not a good neighbor, they enable criminality…”, “They only warehouse the homeless.”, implying that the other facilities do more though, not mentioned, is for fewer and never addressed is what would become of 700 men if the facility closed. Some argue that business interests covet the valuable property. Others emphasize the negative effect on tourism and downtown business of hundreds of homeless men in various states ranging from simply “unsightly” to in-your-face panhandling to mugging, intoxication and mental and physical illness.

The difficulty of the homeless problem is huge. No surprise that some eagerly jump to the solution of pushing it onto someone else’s turf, passing blatantly unconstitutional measures like the so-called Urban Camping Ordinance that gave the police authority to arrest anyone who set their bag down as an illegal “camper”. Business persons in suits who set their brief cases down would not of course have been at risk. Imagine that the city supported the Task Force fully, even expanding it and putting resources into addressing the panhandling, criminal and illness aspects. Likely word would get out and the homeless would gravitate to Atlanta, compounding this intractable problem.

Homelessness is only one of many challenges we face, and given the election results this week, we’ve apparently decided (with a little nudge from wealthy ideologues) our best strategy is denial. Another course would be to look at where we want to be and set about figuring out how to get there. Here’s my vision: we need to devise a way to provide food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare for the world’s population in a way that doesn’t despoil the life system. This means that instead of getting up every morning and chasing money all day we put our creative energy into that task. Any ideas anyone? Probably won’t happen this week, probably not even before the turn of the year but the alternative is extinction by one or more of three intertwined global threats – nuclear or other WMD holocaust and/or pollution and/or overpopulation, hastened and ushered along by our dear old friend, denial.

Yeelections

2010-10-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

Come tuesday we'll see if Georgians have shaken off the long-enduring custom of voting against their own interests. I throw out this post/drawing as a desperate act, like calling upon the Gods to intercede or sticking a pin in a voodoo doll. I want to believe it is only a fringe group susceptible to the hysterical rantings of highly paid hucksters, clever and diabolical, or merely emotionally disturbed recruits in the class war (which they deny exists except when some naive soul asks for justice and fairness). Then I note that Fox News has a lion's share of the ratings and I reacquaint with the meaning of REACTION.

Lesser of Two

2010-10-26T15:42:00.000-07:00

I find it discouraging sometimes, the choices we are presented with at the ballot box. A parliamentary system would allow one to vote their real choice and, since it is not winner take all as here, your choice, green party for example, would be represented to the degree that it got votes. North Carolina, i'm told, is instituting an instant run-off system which is a really good idea: you vote first and second choices and if your first choice doesn't win and there's no clear winner your second choice is counted... opens up the process - tho i've heard the e-voting machines don't know how to handle this so we'll see what happens. On the presidential and senatorial level we tend to get two corporate-approved candidates, one they are enthusiastic about, one they'll settle for so for corporations it's pretty much win-win and for us it's lesser of two evils. Worth the effort though since the difference between candidates can be significant in some areas and thus create or reduce real suffering and damage vis a vis peace, justice and ecology. BTW, the system as it works now allows corporate funding of campaigns (with a vengeance given the recent Supreme Court ruling) so as Molly Ivins said, "You dance with who brung ya." If it's the public who finances your campaign maybe you'll dance with them (us) instead of corporations.

Juggling Priorities

2010-10-21T17:55:00.000-07:00

These drawings are part of my current activism, desperately trying to insert some sort of influence on the up-coming Georgia election, especially the governor's race. Odds are way against the Democrat despite what should be advantages... as across the country, the right-wing hysteria is warping the electorate. It shouldn't even be close. Of course the media, contrary to what the right claims, is center-right to hysterical right. When 1,000 people protest a mosque in NY it's major coverage but I remember a million people marching against the Iraq war in NY and millions in Rome, Paris, Germany, England, with very little coverage in the mainstream. Of course the peace movement didn't have a major network promoting its agenda, flagrantly lying and smearing the excluded opposition. Just as the U.S. attacks any nation that attempts an alternative to capitalism, U.S. media support the status quo and ignore or attack anything else. I'm tempted to describe the Tea Party folks as storm troopers defending the patriarchy (the white patriarchy), mostly unconscious, just reacting. Doesn't sound too far off for the mainstream either.

Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner, A Review

2010-10-07T12:59:00.000-07:00

I did this drawing in grad school, 1975. Somethings never change.

The fact that the author of a book about the CIA writes for the New York Times raises skepticism in some quarters, the ones where I live for example… confirmed in the writer’s ambivalence about CIA’s mission and in his failure to highlight the Bush/Cheney role in having intelligence fabricated and tailored to suit their intention to attack Iraq, blaming instead the agency itself, and in his acceptance of “U.S. interests”, security “needs” and “enemies”. The “need” for intelligence on and operations against other countries is never questioned and the idea of conducting straight-forward, transparent relations with other nations seems never to occur to the writer. He accepts the use of the word “we” as if it refers to the people rather than a ruling elite. Despite these misgivings Weiner exposes many unsavory CIA projects. A few highlights featuring both morally ugly practices and incompetence:

CIA used gangsters in France and Italy, post-world war II., to disrupt unions - not terrorists, not criminals but UNIONS! Political parties not favored by the U.S. were disrupted with various sabotage and dirty tricks and those favored (right wing of course) were supported with bribes and other funding.

CIA lavishly funded the Gehlan Group, (Gehlan was Hitler’s chief of military intelligence). The group of former SS eventually became West Germany’s intelligence agency. Gehlan’s counter intelligence chief turned out to be a Soviet mole, accounting for the failure of almost all CIA operations in post-war Eastern Europe. These operations included dropping what can only be called terrorists into Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe. The mole insured that nearly all of these infiltrators were either killed or used to feed disinformation back into the west. Imagine the response if the Soviet Union had been air-dropping saboteurs and terrorists into the U.S.

CIA Chief of Counter Intelligence James Angleton, a serious alcoholic, was responsible for protecting against double-agents. He coordinated closely with high-ranking British Intelligence officer Kim Philby, also a serious alcoholic and long-time Soviet spy.

CIA spent millions, at a time when a million was a chunk, buying fabricated and useless information from imaginative con-artists in Europe and Asia. Very few CIA officers spoke the language or had studied the culture of the countries they worked in.

CIA overthrew a democratically elected parliamentary system in Iran (1954), installing the Shah and his secret police and torture chambers. A similar operation took place the same year in Guatemala, and the agency was complicit in democracy-undermining coups in Indonesia (1965), Brazil (1963), Chile (1973) and supported death squad governments in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba (before Castro)… a long list continuing today in Columbia, Honduras and an aborted coup in Venezuela.

CIA Phoenix Program: an operation in Vietnam where bounties were paid on human beings; paid informers created lists of suspected communist sympathizers - a minimum of 20,000 Vietnamese were tortured, killed or assassinated.

CIA assassination stories were leaking during congressional investigations in 1975 so President Gerald Ford called a meeting of the editors and publisher of the NY Times to explain that public discussions of CIA history would ruin the reputations of every president since Truman and not serve the “national interest”. This makes sense only if you consider it in the “national interest” of a democracy to keep the people (voters) in the dark about criminal activities of its government.

CIA torture and rendition-for-torture in Iraq and Afghanistan (on-going) with the prohibition against spying on U.S. citizens lifted (not for the first time).

The ideologues in the agency and their supporters/enablers in Congress and the media, seemed never to be troubled by the gross contradictions between U.S. rhetoric around “freedom and democracy” and the consistent siding with undemocratic regimes and forces throughout their history. This apparent puzzle evaporates once one realizes that, to them, the “enemy” is not brutality, dictatorship, tyranny but the appearance of any organized alternative to capitalism. Apparently insecure in their belief that free people would or should always choose “the market” over any alternative economic system, any alternative “threat” must be smashed. Though they were unable to completely stem the tide in Western Europe they did limit the “damage” and were wildly successful in many other parts of the world. State opposition to U.S. workers organizing in the early twentieth century, where National Guard and police were assigned to take the side of owners against workers, is an insightful domestic parallel revealing the actual values behind the rhetoric of what Chomsky calls the servants of power.

A Fair Deal

2010-10-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

The governor’s race is not looking good for the people of Georgia, who have been known to vote against their own interests. Republican Nathan Deal, a retired representative, some say just ahead of an ethics probe, despite this and other questionable financial revelations is leading former democratic governor Roy Barnes in polls. The discouraging thing for progressives, as usual, is that the democrat, though measurably superior to the republican in terms of trust, honesty and ideology, still is a long way from questioning corporate rule. He, understandably – this is Georgia - felt compelled, on veterans day, to praise our troops for “fighting for freedom” when anyone who knows a little history can see the absurdity of that claim. Most Georgia politicians live in a climate where, regardless of their own view, they must deny or avoid the subject of climate change. Right wing media have a firm grip here – a psychological history might help understand this phenomenon but it’s not likely to be funded by Coca Cola.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

2010-09-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

Arrival, oil on canvas, 4 x 5', 1973-ish

Good advice, right? But how do you be happy? An effort of will? Probably, but still, how? Just flex those happy muscles? That’s one of the attractions of Tolle’s work, laying out as he does a method of cultivating what most people would accept as happiness or at least highly desirable, a state of peace… and joy. By joy I don’t mean the Joy-to-the-World of holiday Christmas carolers… or maybe I do, or maybe they do. Whatever, what I mean by it is the state of consciousness where one deeply experiences being. There is a feeling of novelty when one shifts over from mind-chatter to awareness which expands the deeper one goes into it, when one begins to realize the spectacular miracle of existence, of consciousness… joy seems an appropriate word to describe that feeling. Love is another, the feeling that accompanies realization of interconnectedness, of Oneness as the so-called mystics throughout history have noted.

No one sees the face of God and lives. That Old Testament Dylan line I believe comes out of scripture somewhere and expresses the fear one experiences when glimpsing depth-reality through the lens of the dominant paradigm of separation. Terror dissipates when one feels interconnectivity. Merely thinking it is just another belief, likely to be overruled by the inherited patriarchal assumption of separateness. I venture that when Christians say “Jesus loves you” This is what they mean, the experience of interconnectivity… just other words for it – not attractive to me because of all the baggage I bring to that but theoretically equivalent.

Email Exchange

2010-09-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

This is my reply in an email exchange that evolved out of a discussion that seemed to me to equate Muslims with terrorism:

This is where we agree, I think: we both oppose people who harm others, who dominate them, deny their freedom, lie to make themselves look good and others bad, deny people their rights under the constitution and the bill of rights and also our rights under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed I think by all member nations

http://www.amnestyusa.org/human-rights/universal-declaration-of-human-rights/page.do?id=1031003

This is where we disagree, I think: the things that we agree on up there should be the focus, we should hold ALL citizens to those principles. it isn't ALL Muslims who violate them and it isn't ALL U.S. citizens who follow them... we need to go after those who violate them whether they are in Saudi Arabia or the U.S.... and by we I don't mean the U.S., I mean anyone on the planet who cares about those principles, and by "going after" I don't mean with violence ... I mean with law and persuasion, and patience for we ourselves are not so enlightened that we might not be violating other's rights without being aware... and if we are patient and prepared to listen as well as speak we might be persuaded and change our behavior - if we expect it of others then we must expect it of ourselves.

These are ideals we strive for. If we don't make them our main priority then we will have war and with the kind of weapons available and developing, the planet and its people will perish in nuclear holocaust, if not directly then in the aftermath when the environment, the life-system, breaks down, from radiation, nuclear winter and also from the pollutants that our life choices are more slowly but definitely creating - are we on the same page or are we still in different books?

Katherine Mitchell at Sandler Hudson Gallery

2010-08-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

At Katherine Mitchell’s Sandler Hudson Gallery talk (12/19/09) an enthusiastic group of old friends and fans were treated to some background to new work, which was unusual for Katherine for its text-presence. In the course of the talk she read from some of the text that had worked its way onto the canvas and paper works in the show. The paintings still carried Katherine’s familiar visual dignity but I found myself scribbling notes when she read quotes from prominent thinkers. The thought occurred to me that here are really smart people putting their impressive minds to the issues of art, intuition, beauty etc; and yet what we end with is occasional insights embedded in an intellectual fog. I decided to explore this further.

Bertrand Russell said something to the effect that, in reading, what sometimes initially appears difficult is merely muddled. That’s the feeling I get when I read art theory. Donald Kuspit for example always seemed so erudite to me with his references to transcendental consciousness, meaning in art etc; He once wrote that what Minimal Art claimed as its project, being in the moment, is actually a memory of what just happened. It’s close to NOW but not quite. I thought that was insightful at the time but now it seems off. The thought about something that just happened is about the past but being here/now isn’t about thinking about being, it’s being itself which is nowhere else but now.

This goes a long way, for me, toward unmuddling what art is about. Some theorists claim that the primary attribute in Art, dividing good from bad, is a display of skill. Others dismiss this as conservative and actually an obstacle to authentic art. I would suggest that what people are after in this attempt to distinguish good from bad art is to articulate this: that art coming out of presence is recognized as such by those with ample grounding in being – those who have had the frequent experience of moving into the present where the enjoyment of being escapes motor mind.

If you’re not present you’ll be possessed by ego which means being judgmental, comparing, seeking to feel superior, thinking thinking thinking whereas if you’re present you’ll detect the authentic or you’ll recognize the inauthentic productions of the ego, or perhaps a mix. Just as the religious acolyte glimpses “god” but then becomes entangled in theology, so the art seeker glimpses authenticity and attempts explanation in the canon of aesthetics.

Croce talked about the difference between ordering a pizza and Shakespeare as being a matter of complexity not kind. The effort made to make sense of sensory data, to interpret the world to Croce was art at the most basic level. This appealed to me for a long time. Perhaps what he was attempting to describe was the act of creation that occurs out of the state of stillness or presence. In the now you enjoy, no need to do anything… until you are moved to a creative act. And that act reflects the intelligence out of which it flows, to which presence connects us, and is recognized by others when they are attuned to that intelligence through awareness, cessation of mind-chatter - obsession with past, future, fantasy and anxiety.

In support of this notion, one of Katherine’s sources, Cezanne, our father who art in heaven, cautioned, “One must eschew that literary spirit which is so often divergent from the true voice of painting…in order not to get lost too long in interminable speculation.“ The true voice of painting (creativity) is not thinking, nor suffering but being.

Ways and Means

2010-08-13T12:44:00.001-07:00

Beach Seen, oil painting by Tom Ferguson (images stolen from daughter's sketch books)

What is the best way to arrest our skid toward extinction? How to live an ethical life? How do we advance “spiritually”? How do we create the shift necessary to avoid nuclear war, war in general, alleviate poverty, eliminate pollution and unsustainable practices? I have always been suspicious of one-sentence answers to big questions but Tolle’s take on things overcomes my skepticism as it embodies the beauty of simplicity, a strategy to address the full range of important issues that plague the human family. As with all simple answers elaboration is required.

Seems whatever question you ask Tolle the answer is presence. How do I respond to my perception that the momentum of history is leading us toward extinction? That the quest for profits, power and privilege is devouring the life system? That the most successful in that quest use their considerable influence to insure that no alternative gets a fair hearing, that their preferred mode undergoes no serious questioning. This is accomplished via their ownership of media and disproportionate impact on the political system and other institutional life?

We can use our minds to create strategies to propagate alternatives, we might do that, what we are inspired to do out of presence is not predictable which is why Tolle doesn’t advocate specific actions like blocking logging operations, whaling ships, war materials and demonstrations. Get present, then, connected to the self-evident intelligence out of which flows evolution, you’ll know what to do. It could be those actions, it could be others, but it is known only through stillness.

On some level reality can be conceived as a frequency array. Human consciousness, or unconsciousness, can be seen as part of this array, anger vibrating at a different frequency than affection, judgment different from acceptance… and presence, the state of non-thinking awareness, is a frequency we can call joy or peace. An agitated angry self-righteous demand for peace is little different, frequency-wise, than a similar demand for war. The frequency array is shifted by mere presence and one’s contribution to that is the ultimate form of activism. Presence is the state we are in when obsessive thinking is stilled. That is attained by simply noticing the chatter, bringing it into consciousness where it dissolves.

Now in presence, in the stillness of being, there eventually comes an impulse, an enthusiasm to act and that is the answer to the question, what to do.

Social Security for sale (again)?

2010-07-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

Bush may be gone but his ghost lingers

Social Security is SEPARATE from the general fund, a separate tax and a separate fund. So beware when you hear politicians or pundits talk about cutting benefits to address the deficit or to “invest” in the stock market. They are either extremists who don’t believe in social security, Wall Street scam artists who want to get their hands on that money or politicians working on their behalf – that’s how they raise campaign contributions and why we need to publicly finance elections. So make it clear to any politician, as we did to Bush when he tried to privatize it, that this scam will not fly, that their career is OVER if they attack social security.

Reply to Cold Warrior

2010-06-29T14:47:00.000-07:00

The cartoon refers to then Secty. of Defense Aspin but not much has changed, we can expect the same attitude administration to administration.

Lawrence Kolb's 6/24 opinion piece on the START treaty in the Atlanta Constitution/Journal was an unexpected bit of common sense in an area not noted for sanity. His support and that of the list of other cold warriors he supplies who also support it ought to be enough to convince even Georgia's Senators Issackson and Chambliss. We shall see, we can hope. The position he advocates is welcome but the reference he makes to "emerging threats" gives me pause. Martin Luther King's admonition that violence begets violence does not seem yet to have gained traction among the old, and new, cold warriors, the obviousness of its argument, that actions have consequences, not withstanding. This is no less true of the supposed "liberal" President Obama. One day, hopefully before we perish as a species, our leaders will recognize that so long as we use violence to resolve conflict, to seek some kind of perpetual safety through domination, we drift toward extinction.

The Scary "C"

2010-06-28T18:57:00.000-07:00

Dark Lock, Tom Ferguson, 27 x 23" oil on canvas

I sent this text to someone awaiting diagnosis for cancer, hoping for good news, trying to impart what little wisdom in my possession, what i'd be telling myself if it were me:

this is from Eckhart Tolle who recommends practicing observing: the ego loves to ramble on, thinking this, thinking that, always thinking, mind chatter but this blocks us from the NOW and that's where we are, that's all that exists. Nothing ever happened nor will ever happen outside of the now. In the now one is connected to the whole universe, that is the true nature of reality, interconnection, wholeness, and when one FEELS this interconnection, not thinks it, FEELS it, the sensation is peace (some call this God).

Ego, which is that thinker up there in our heads, believes that we are separate which belief creates our dysfunctional world, of fear, war, bickering, competition, cruelty, environmental degradation etc;

The practice is to as often as you can throughout the day notice your thoughts and emotions, just notice them... that brings you to who you are, the observer not the thinker/emoter... when the mind chatter is suspended for that time one experiences the joy of being...

The practice of being the observer, returning again and again to wordless being, each time reinforcing itself so that you become more and more present, you spend more and more of your time there (here) in peace.

Oprah had ten talks with Tolle which are still available I think on her website and are a treat. The talk was divided into ten, the number of chapters in his book, A New Earth and of course he's on youtube. Good luck good luf

CIA at home and abroad

2010-06-24T17:23:00.000-07:00

The CIA, since its inception in the late 1940s, has bought, corrupted and otherwise influenced individuals and governments across the world.* Their use of money parallels the way wealth corrupts, buys and otherwise corrupts and over-influences the U.S. government, electorate and other institutions.

Wealthy individuals and corporations make money available to those who serve a narrow, corporate, pro-capitalist agenda and those who will attack and otherwise undermine the efforts of those with a non-corporate, alternative agenda.

The CIA did it in Iran, essentially buying a revolution, over-throwing a democratically elected government, in the early 50s. Same scenario in Guatemala, same time-frame. Gangsters were used to intimidate and corrupt unions and political parties, in France and Italy after World War II., sometimes in exchange for allowing heroine smuggling into the U.S. I risk the obvious: the U.S. consistently chooses to ally itself with criminals against citizens innocently practicing democracy.

Oil-rich Texans influenced the direction of our "democracy" by funding right wing groups such as ex-CIA agent William F. Buckley’s National Review and other activities and other even zanier right wingers such as the John Birch Society. They did not restrict themselves to Texas, targeting “liberal” senators across the nation, lavishly funding their opponents, usually staunch embracers of the religion of anti-communism, meaning actually pro-capitalist privilege. Wealthy activists in other parts of the country may not have been as flamboyant but were no less commited in their determination to undermine democracy.

The ideology of anti-communism is not principled opposition to the lack of justice and democracy, its gulags etc; as is shown by the alliances mentioned above with gangsters, and in the enthusiastic support for brutal regimes world-wide practicing the very evils they, rhetorically, decry. The threat of Communism to these “patriots” is not in its corruption but in its promise of equality and condemnation of class privilege.

*Legacy of Ashes, a History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

Propa-darn-ganda

2010-06-23T23:54:00.000-07:00

We live in such a highly and effectively indoctrinated society that it takes an honest effort to have a look to see if you yrself are a captive (it's possible).

You can ignore that statement, deny it, deem it irrelevant, not applicable or have a look...

Noam Chomsky's book, Hegemony or Survival (or any of his political books)

Michael Parenti's Superpatriot

and if you let this info in you'll need Eckhart Tolle's, A New Earth, to cope.

Commonist Nostalgia

2010-06-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

Michael Parenti (his book called Superpatriot is excellent) argues that the people of Eastern Europe and Russia had guaranteed jobs, health care, housing, etc; With the fall of the USSR they had visions of suburban ranch, two car garage etc; but what they got is shit and corruption: gangsters running things, no real political input, more or less fake elections like here, malnutrition, no work, no food, no suburbia.... they become third world… and they wish they had back what they had before the fall (they don’t idealize it, they definitely lacked political freedom, due process etc but they had the basics and the basics are pretty important –try going without’em). The comparison isn't of "freedom and tyranny but of having the basics and not.

Noam Chomsky also points out in his curtain-lifting books that in the Soviet domains of Cold War days the people had the bare necessities, even high government officials lived in modest apartments, whereas in the U.S. domains, Central and South America, Indonesia, etc; a tiny elite were immensely wealthy (so long as they served U.S. corporate interests) while the majority population endured deprivation, malnutrition, poverty and were threatened by accusations of "communist", which made them targets of death squads, if they tried to organize to improve their lot. The U.S. provided much of the means for this oppression via “foreign aid”, CIA intervention, military training and arms – funded by U.S. taxpayers of course. So the bottom people of an affluent nation fund the oppression of bottomers of another nation. As the observation goes, the wealth is created by the workers and divided among the owners. The owners own/control the media so we get ministers of misinformation like Rush Limbo, O’reilly etc; keeping us distracted from the exquisite scam by demonizing immigrants, Islam, the homeless, dark-skinned people, gays, women… whatever works. This is one of my blog themes, power. The antidote lies in the other, being.

Mona Lisa

2010-05-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

On some level I am Mona Lisa,… remember that song, Nat King Cole – the voice, just the chorus? Remember that painting? On some level, there we all are, Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa. She’s there (here) vibrating in a smile of being and if we’re not there with her we’re missing the profoundest experience our senses can deliver.

We are at the edge of an avalanche of events which pushes us into the future... all that came before affects us with its momentum... we can hardly pause to make choices yet that is all we do, make choices... we choose a story to explain our predicament, we choose an action based on the values we've chosen... moment to moment... our magnificent evolution story instills awe and wonder... convincing in it's anthropomorphism, attributing this goal-making, desirous emerging of consciousness as if it were already consciously choosing... at odds with the more or less random flux and scramble that evolution is usually portrayed as ... yet why not?... it HAS to be intelligent, it IS intelligence, so random is not a satisfying way to describe its groping proliferation. I have to ponder to accept that the trajectory is toward cooperation and consciousness but it's plain in multi-celled organisms and this conversation is an instance of the impulse towards cooperation as we, together, grope for a deeper glimpse of reality.

Being is an experience which is not intellectual,... words can only point at it, name it. It consists, pointing at it, of feeling, knowing ALL, ONE... the past, the future, the present, the physical, the metaphysical, vibrating strings, swirling atoms, dividing cells, slamming doors, devious plans, dancing weekends... distant galaxies, super-clusters and beyond, all simultaneously... the connection where you recognize, feel, your connection with everything else... that is enlightenment, that is beyond the fear that drives our culture. that is the mindshift that will divert us from extinction. As I write these words I shift my attention away from fantasies of future/past and paradoxically recognize
that it is mind-chatter, word-chatter that separates me from essential reality which is NOW, here... which is being.

Eckhart Tolle, and other teachers, suggest that we go to the wordless place, the place where the mind is still, NOT thinking... that is where we are connected to the intelligence of the universe and the place is NOW - some like to use the word God for that, being in the presence of God or Being or just being Present. These of course are just words that point at an experience, that experience is the real thing. As soon as we try to "understand it" - with words, it can fizzle and we are back in ego. Ego wants to be "right", only MY words are correct, your words are wrong... let's go to war! No, the only access to BEING, to GOD, is thru the wordless NOW... be here, now,... no words, no thoughts. Now I can hear you saying it is only thru JESUS that we come to GOD and Tolle suggests that that is the same thing, words pointing at the same experience... in fact he quotes from Jesus to support this view, that Jesus was saying this same thing... the kingdom of god is spread upon the face of the earth and we do not see it (because we're in our head thinking). How do we go to the wordless space? We simply become aware, we become the observer. instead of being the words in our head we observe the words and gradually realize we are the observer not the words. Some call this prayer but words are tricky and the mind-chatter habit is ingrained and powerful so we must be careful. I can accept that the word prayer refers to this state but I prefer the more direct word awareness, being, since they are less encumbered with baggage. Be in the moment. Don't judge, just observe.

Know Nukes

2010-05-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

This post is abit long. Several posts just previous to this on the same subject are more succinct.

In 1952 the Paley Commission, appointed by the Truman Administration to study the energy situation, recommended that the U.S. build itself a solar future, predicting 15 million sun-heated homes by 1975. The Commission specifically warned against going nuclear, asserting the promise of renewable energy sources to be greater than that of nuclear power for meeting energy needs and preventing economic dislocations due to disruptions in foreign oil supply. Dwight Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program intervened the next year with its propaganda promises of energy "too cheap to meter". The program aimed to distract a population uneasy with nuclear weapons, providing a shield of commercial nuclear power behind which Dr. Strangelove could amass unhindered megatonnage. More than a trillion dollars has since been squandered, for which we now receive a paltry 20% of our electricity and the dubious "security" of thousands of nuclear devices. Each nuclear power plant, and its cooling pond (spent fuel exposed to air bursts into flames), is a pre-placed nuclear bomb to any determined terrorist wishing us harm.

If this were the whole story we could move on, an expensive lesson learned, a dangerous historical moment passed, its irrationality attributable to reckless youth. Unfortunately there is a legacy, in the form of radioactive waste already released into the environment, more waste in questionable containment with no where to go, warheads out the gazoo and the ever-youthful Dr. Strangelove and friends in the wings, forget wings - on stage!, panting for another trillion dollar go-round.

Let's look a little closer at some of the costs of ignoring the Paley Commission's findings:

A report released by Renewable Energy Policy Project (REPP) examines U.S. government spending on energy technologies. According to "Federal Energy Subsidies: Not All Technologies Are Created Equal" the U.S. government has spent approximately $150 billion on energy subsidies for wind, solar and nuclear power--96.3% of which has gone to nuclear power. There are 108 nuclear reactors currently operating in the U.S. To demonstrate just how modern and up-to-date they are, Japan has gone and built 51 while France did them several better, at 60. The nuclear industry promotes itself to third world nations by playing on modern vs. backwater self images.

The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) estimates 430,000 "excess" cancer fatalities from atmospheric nuclear testing 1940 – 2000. Extrapolated to the entire period of time that global fall-out from atmospheric testing will remain results in a figure of 2.4 million excess cancer fatalities with incidence many times higher (p.110 Critical Condition: Human Health and the Environment MIT Press 1993).

It's not clear what impact on Soviet policies Paley's recommendations might have had but in 1957 an explosion in the Soviet Union made Chelyabinsk (Mayak) the most polluted place on earth. Chelyabinsk was the heart of the Soviet nuclear weapons production system throughout the Cold War. Three disasters with its nuclear waste--in 1946, 1957 and 1967-have caused cumulative damages comparable to, and probably worse than, the Chernobyl meltdown. Even today, some 100 million curies of radioactivity remain in Mayak's Lake Karachay. Scientists from the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council say, " The groundwater is already contaminated, and the area is subject to Cyclones and earthquakes that could further spread the radioactivity."
Rivaling Chelyabinsk is the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia, near the border with Norway. During the Cold War, the harbors of Kola were home to the Soviet Union's Northern Fleet, which dumped used submarine reactors, spent fuel and other nuclear debris into the sea with abandon. The waters now contain two-thirds of all the nuclear waste dumped into the world's oceans.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is proud possessor of 700,000 metric tons of nuclear materials, mostly depleted Uranium. This is perhaps 5% of the total when commercial reactor materials are added. In the 40s & 50s – 440 billion gallons of contaminated liquids were discharged into the ground at Hanford site in Washington State (enough for a lake 80' deep the size of Manhattan). There are 189 metric tons of HEU (highly enriched Uranium - 9,450 Hiroshima-sized bombs) at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, some sitting for 40 years, in facilities vulnerable to fire, in containers of questionable integrity, according to Robert Alvarez, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2000, Alvarez is a former DOE employee. He claims that the Rio Grande could have become a Chernobyl-sized disaster if the rains had come and washed contaminants into its waters after the May 2000 Los Alamos fire denuded vegetation retaining the waste.

Within a month of the Los Alamos fire another fire scorched nearly half the Hanford nuclear reservation and 20 homes as it crept within two miles of some of the most lethal nuclear waste on Earth, in 177 storage tanks buried six feet underground that could explode if a spark were introduced inside. In August 1984, 300,000 acres of the Hanford site was scorched in another fire.
Cleanup of the uranium enrichment plant at Paducah, Kentucky will take a decade and is expected to cost $1.3 billion, according to a report issued by DOE.
Nuclear facilities in La Hague, France and Sellafield in Scotland spill hundreds of millions of liters of radioactive waste into the sea annually. Contamination has been detected in sea life around the coasts of Scandinavia, Iceland and the Arctic. Sellafield officials seem to be reneging on a promise to stop the discharges by 2020.

Thousands of radioactive waste barrels are rusting away on the seabed in UK waters, environmentalists have warned. Greenpeace has released a film of the legacy of radioactive waste dumping at sea. It shows corroding, broken and disintegrated barrels of radioactive waste, remnants of some 28,500 barrels dumped by the UK between 1950 and 1963. Mike Townley of Greenpeace said: "Although dumping radioactive wastes at sea from ships is now banned, paradoxically the discharge of radioactive wastes into the sea via pipelines from land is not. "Such double standards are not maintained for technical or scientific reasons, but only because the operators of the nuclear reprocessing facilities in La Hague and Sellafield want to save money."

Forty countries have pledged US$370 million to clean up the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, which killed an estimated 30,000 people during the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986. Five months after the Chernobyl catastrophe, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s true believer, Dr. Morris Rosen said, "Even if there was this type of accident every year, I would consider nuclear power to be a valid source of energy".

A recent study shows infant death rates near five U.S. nuclear plants dropped immediately and dramatically after the reactors closed (Study by New York based Radiation and Public Health Project published in the spring 2000 issue of the scientific journal Environmental Epidemiology and Toxicology).
Smugglers, aiming to transport nearly nine pounds of uranium-containing metal rods into Afghanistan, were blocked by authorities in Kazakstan. Such rods are produced in Kazakstan, Russia and Ukraine.

The federal government announced in January 2000 that many workers who built U. S. nuclear weapons during the Cold War years are likely to become ill (if they haven't already) due to exposure to radiation or toxic chemicals. This marked a historic reversal by the government, which had always maintained there were no connections between work at the weapons plants and later illnesses. This belated, if limited, fessing up, occurred under the Clinton administration. Under Bush we have reinstituted a rigorous denial-as-usual.
Delays in the 30-year, $50 billion effort to clean up hazardous wastes at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are increasing risks at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, said an audit from the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general. Tank leaks, plus billions of gallons of more diluted contaminants poured into the ground since 1945, "could reach the Columbia River in as little as 20 years and continue for the next 5,000 years," the report said. At least 25 tanks are estimated to be generating enough hydrogen gas to cause a devastating, radiation-spreading fire if ignited.

The suicide of the director of Chelyabinsk-70, one of Russia's leading nuclear labs, reportedly because lab personnel had not been paid their meager $50 salaries for months, raises serious questions regarding the proliferation of nuclear materials. At the Chelyabinsk nuclear weapons industrial facility more than 60,000 pounds of plutonium are stored in 12,000 stainless steel containers the size of thermos bottles. Two or three of them contain enough plutonium to make a nuclear bomb.

Thirty years ago, Alaska's Amchitka Island was the site of three large underground nuclear tests. Despite claims by the Atomic Energy Commission and the Pentagon that the test sites would safely contain the radiation released by the blasts for thousands of years, newly released documents from the DOE show that the Amchitka tests began to leak almost immediately. Highly radioactive elements and gasses poured out of the collapsed test shafts, leached into the groundwater and worked their way into ponds, creeks and the Bering Sea. At the same time, thousands of Amchitka laborers and Aleuts living on nearby islands were put in harm's way. Dozens have died of radiation-linked cancers. The response of the federal government to these disturbing findings has been almost as troublesome as the circumstances surrounding the tests themselves: a consistent pattern of indifference, denial and cover-up.

Russia has offered the US, in negotiations on START-III, warhead numbers as low as 1,500. However, the US in response has actually tried to persuade Russia to go for higher numbers of nuclear warheads. This again violates the legal commitment to the total and unequivocal elimination of nuclear arsenals required by the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty).

Startling findings involving economic impacts of a severe accident: DOE, in one of its Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) on Yucca Mountain (a nuclear waste repository in Nevada now under construction – despite failure to meet DOE's own minimal requirements), mentions categories of economic impacts that could result from a severe nuclear transport accident but does not provide dollar amounts. Researchers Resnikoff and Lamb, using DOE's own model, did perform such calculations. What they found was shocking. A severe truck cask accident could result in $20 billion to $36 billion in cleanup costs for an accident in an urban area. A severe rail accident in an urban area could result in costs from $145 billion to $270 billion.

Several years ago, DOE estimated that a severe transport accident in a rural setting that released only a miniscule fraction of the cask's radioactive cargo would contaminate a 42 square mile area of land. The cleanup would cost $620 million and take one year and three months. The totally unlikely accident that recently closed part of Atlanta's I-285 for four weeks was a serious inconvenience. Consider the repercussions if that cargo had been nuclear waste instead of gasoline.

Fun Quotes

"Just one of our relatively invulnerable Poseidon submarines-less than 2% of our total nuclear force of submarines, aircraft, and land-based missiles - carries enough warheads to destroy every large and medium-sized city in the Soviet Union." - U.S. President Jimmy Carter, 1977, "You have survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition than it can inflict on you. That's the way you can have a winner." - U.S. Vice President George Bush, on how to win a nuclear war.
"Military strategists can claim that an intelligent U.S. offensive strategy, wedded to homeland defenses, should reduce U.S. casualties to approximately 20 million . . . a level compatible with national survival and recovery." - Colin Gray, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
"Dig a hole, cover it with a couple doors and then throw three feet of dirt on top. It's the dirt that does it. If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody's going to make it." - Thomas K. Jones, U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces, on surviving a nuclear war.
"If no new weapons are going to be built, what am I going to be doing?" - John Immele, Associate Director for Nuclear Weapons Technology at Los Alamos, 1993.

This mini-tour of a grimy and terrifying terrain, might lead a citizen to conclude that nuclear facilities, weapons and their deadly by-products are not good for young children, parents, old or young pets, pet owners (all ages), nor old mother earth. The credibility of those who have conducted this little charade is, to be kind, poor in the extreme. They have plans. They would like to build more nuclear power plants, "safe" of course. They expect the public to be responsible for the liability in case of an accident via the Price-Anderson Act. They would like to burn plutonium as fuel in some of these plants and they are just itching to reprocess nuclear waste, one of the dirtiest aspects of the whole business. They want to build more bombs and allocate lots of money for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) so as to maintain an old & cultivate a new generation of weapons designers. They want to build weapons in space under the guise of missile defense and, to demonstrate their profound regard for future generations, they are willing to divert funds earmarked for cleaning up the mess they've made over to their exciting new projects. What this situation calls for is a little, actually a lot, of citizen intervention. A good place to start:

Nuclear Information Resource Service www.nirs.org

Institute for Energy and Environmental Research www.ieer.org

www.nonukesyall.org Nuclear Watch South

Nukes Again...

2010-05-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

Nuclear Watch South (formerly GANE)

We would like to highlight the following, issues which are not adequately addressed by the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission nor the Nuclear Power industry.

the dangers of terrorism and insider sabotage at Nuclear sites:
• nuclear power plants have shown lax security in the past with 50% penetration in mock attacks, even when security KNEW the dates & times of infiltration.
• Cooling ponds are even more vulnerable than the reactors themselves. The spent fuel in these ponds would burst into flames if exposed to air, dispersing radioactivity widely.
• It is very doubtful whether a reactor could withstand impact from a 911 airliner attack
• It should be noted that wind and solar panels do not spread extremely long-lived toxins when blown up.

Water Usage:
• The two new reactors contemplated at Plant Vogtle would use the equivalent of the residential water use of Savannah, Augusta and Atlanta, an impact the NRC, during a time of severe drought, incredibly labels “small”.
• The water that is returned to the river will be at high temperatures, negatively impacting river habitat
• The water that is lost, 2/3, as vapor is a global warming gas.

It is ironic that the ideological sector most loudly worshipping at the alter of the “free market” is calling for taxpayer subsidies for an industry that cannot compete in that market.

In Brief, Nukes...

2010-05-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

Nuclear Energy Issues:

• Expensive, not competitive with wind/solar, conservation
• Long-lived radioactive waste with NO storage solution after 50 years
• To terrorists a nuke plant is a pre-positioned nuclear device
• If nukes are safe why won’t the insurance companies cover them?
• Uses way too much water & creates thermal pollution
• Routinely releases toxins into soil, air and river and ground water

The apparently irresistible lobbying and campaign contributions that seduced national legislators into signing onto privatization and deregulation schemes over the past decades brought us to the economic melt-down we are now just beginning to enjoy.

The push for SB31 is more of the same. I hope you’ll consider that history and two other things in your deliberations:

Nuclear power is the wrong horse;

This bill is an industry fantasy and a consumer rip-off.
(comment to GA Legislative committee on a bill to encourage nukes)

2010-05-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

Fundamentalist Ideology

2010-05-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

The term fundamentalist ideology probably evokes Islamic fanaticism to many, Christian or Jewish extremists to others but rarely are the promoters of capitalism associated with the term. Yet there is clearly a similar level of intellectual dishonesty. Rush Limbo has been implying that the Gulf oil spill-disaster is caused by “whacko environmentalists” and though he is the hysterical end of capitalism you won’t find a lot of real analysis on the more respectable end either. Numerous pundits approvingly report on the “nuclear renaissance” without mentioning Chernobyl, indeed, scrupulously avoiding the New York Academy of Science’s recent claim that nearly a million people world-wide died as a result of that disaster. And my long unanswered question, if we truly have a free press providing a full range of views for an informed citizenry where are the socialist commentators? In my home town newspaper you get Bill O’reilly all the way over to Thomas Sowell. That’s probably true across the country. No commentator consistently pointing out the contradictions and corruption of capitalism and discussing an alternative need apply to any mainstream news outlet. I need not rehearse the corporate “ownership” of congress and the political process in the U.S. directly related to how campaigns are financed. The owners control policy and media debate and where this leads us is ominously illustrated in the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

I sent this as a letter to the editor to the Atlanta Constitution Journal. Interesting to compare what i wrote to what they ran. It's almost an illustration of my point (what they cut in bold):

The term fundamentalist ideology probably evokes Islamic fanaticism to many, Christian or Jewish extremists to others but rarely are the promoters of capitalism associated with the term. Yet there is clearly a similar level of intellectual dishonesty.

Rush Limbo has been implying that the Gulf oil spill-disaster is caused by “whacko environmentalists” and though he is the hysterical end of capitalism you won’t find a lot of real analysis on the more respectable end either. Numerous pundits approvingly report on the “nuclear renaissance” without mentioning Chernobyl, indeed, scrupulously avoiding the New York Academy of Science’s recent claim that nearly a million people world-wide died as a result of that disaster.

And my long unanswered question, if we truly have a free press providing a full range of views for an informed citizenry where are the socialist commentators? In my home town newspaper you get Bill O’reilly all the way over to Thomas Sowell. That’s probably true across the country. No commentator consistently pointing out the contradictions and corruption of capitalism and discussing an alternative need apply to any mainstream news outlet. I need not rehearse the corporate “ownership” of congress and the political process in the U.S. directly related to how campaigns are financed. The owners control policy and media debate and where this leads us is ominously illustrated in the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Imperative Choice

2010-04-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

Over the years I have attempted to define Art, to puzzle out where it comes from, what it means, its relevance, why we would be drawn to experience or create it. My current thinking is that when we become present we enjoy simple being and in that state we are often moved to create. When we are present, as opposed to engaging in obsessive mind-chatter, we recognize a work of Art that has been created out of that state. This view can be found, vaguely expressed, in the muddy ramblings of Art Theory and in the groping intuitive practice of contemporary Art - muddy and groping signs of an awakening that is timely and imperative.

above image, Twenty Year Work Bench - a painting done on the top of a work table i'd used for 20 years, with all it's spills, scrapes and bruises... overlaid with images from kid's drawings, mostly daughter's. The text is from the back cover of volume 4. of my Mind Stream trilogy, accessible from the link in the upper right corner of this page.

Class (again)

2010-03-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

(Emory Prof, Fred Menger asked me to draw up the above idea)

Just finished The Big Rich by Bryan Burrough. One of the things that struck me about the Texas oil-millionaires, aside from their often ostentatious and outrageous consumption, was that almost all, despite immense wealth freeing them from the necessity to work for a living, continued to go into the office six days a week like any other working stiff. Roy Cullen even drove a cheap Chevrolet and brown bagged his lunch. Since they were basically workaholics, why were they so concerned about “big spending liberals” taxing them to death? They could have simply paid the tax owed, say 40% or whatever it was, and still had way more than they knew what to do with. They certainly weren’t working for their salaries, struggling to meet the mortgage, pay the bills.

Unfortunately these very wealthy individuals were mostly extremist conservatives who shifted the country rightward with their undemocratic money influence. Cullen even seriously argued for the idea of one dollar one vote. They funded McCarthy, William F. Buckley, John Birch Society, KKK etc;, right wing radio and newspapers and supported politicians who would do their bidding and went after those who wouldn’t with swiftboat type campaigns and funding their opponents, and not just in Texas. They funded the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, fully buying into the hysterical religion of anti-communism. Of course not every oil millionaire fits the profile. Some became world-class partiers, some collected art and enjoyed high culture, donated to worthy causes. Cullen, again, gave away over 90% of his fortune to hospitals and universities while otherwise completely embracing the right wing stereotype.

This kind of concentrated wealth has repercussions. When workaholics are out there feeding their addiction and are willing to use their influence to grease government wheels in order to pull off deals that have overlooked harmful environmental and social costs then we all lose enabling a dysfunctional class. Cullen’s one dollar one vote philosophy isn’t that far off as embodied in our political system where politicians must raise huge sums to finance their campaigns. As Molly Ivins, a Texan of a different sort, used to say, “You dance with who brung ya.” If the public finances elections then it is the public who brung the politicians so it is the public, not the corporations and wealthy class, who they owe, who they represent. The health care debate, military spending, corporate tax policy, the whole range of issues would be a whole different discussion under those circumstances. That class would still own the media and thus limit if not control debate but there might be something we could do about that too.

Justice and the School of Assassins

2010-02-21T19:56:00.000-08:00

(the "goings on" in Eastern Europe at the time of the drawing was the overthrow of dictatorship, thus the nervousness of dictators in our lil sphere of influence)

The Salvadoran army officers who murdered Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and young daughter n 1989, were pardoned in El Salvador. In outrageous contrast the thirteen U.S. citizens who reenacted the 1989 murders, as part of a demonstration against the School of the Americas (S.O.A.) (School of the Assassins) where the officers were trained, were sentenced to prison. This has happened every year since the murders and is planned to continue until the school is closed.

The pious, if sleepy, Judge Elliot, who found the defendants guilty April 29, 1998 or thereabouts, also imposed on them a telling anecdote: if a man steals bread for his starving children he has good motives but criminal intent, has broken the law and therefore should go to prison. Apparently the learned judge has not read Les Miserable, or perhaps did read the sad tale and identified with the sociopathic prosecutor, cheering on his obsessive pursuit.

The defense took two basic strategies: to call for dismissal of the charges (engaging in banned political activity at Fort Benning where the school is located) on the grounds that only those opposing the S.O.A. were banned while those in favor were allowed to express their support; and that a higher moral law justifies the "illegal" action taken by the group. The analogy was drawn that citizens would have been breaking German law if they had stopped the death trains to Auschwitz but a higher moral law would have absolved them.

Reverend Bill Bichsel, in his eloquent pre-sentence statement, said, " We are not afraid of your jails or your police. We will be back to demonstrate on each anniversary of the murders until that school is closed. I hope one day you (Judge Elliot) will join us." Spontaneous and sustained applause erupted in the packed court room.

The S.O.A. claims that its instruction aims to instill "American" values in its students. Critics claim that the school actually teaches torture techniques (verified by the leaking of a manual). That aside, the fact is that many of its graduates have engaged in undemocratic activities, coups and assassinations, such notorious figures as Manuel Noriega and El Salvador death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson. It is a dubious proposition that a rigid hierarchical military is the appropriate teacher of democratic values. The school’s unspoken mission, and one of the reasons it should be closed, is to establish relationship with Latin American military officers so as to have coup-influence when leaders down there get the idea that democracy is more important than U.S. corporate interests.

Letter to the Editor

2010-02-13T09:34:00.001-08:00

Responding to an activist call I wrote the following letter to the editor (the drawing I used on a previous post but it seems apropo):

The most obvious solution to our health care crisis is clearly the single payer, medicare for all, system that works so well for the people in the other industrialized nations (Western Europe, Australia, Canada). This is not even on the table in the U.S. due to special interests who see such a system as a threat to their continuing robbery of the U.S. public - health insurance and drug companies (cartels). There is also the ideological contingent who shout down any rational discussion with cries of socialism! Then there is the medical establishment who seem to be motivated by the same end, profits. This same element opposed the original creation of social security and had they prevailed we would have a huge population of the elderly living and dying on the street. I don't think we should be listening to them this time either. It seems the most we can hope for currently is an expanded medicare and we should not allow undemocratic fanatics and profiteers to stop us.

Triumph and Defeat

2010-02-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

I lay on the floor of the empty gallery, fairly drunk, savoring the evening, my first serious one-artist exhibition opening. I had stationed myself behind a painted screen with peek-holes and watched the crowd come through, walk along the row of paintings in which was inserted several live tableau – the Sappington twins dressed as elegant society woman and bag lady, Dan Basso in green face and tux sipping martini, Jesse Robertson Altman, at his feet, as housewife in red face, all on pedestals a la Gilbert and George.

Prior to entering this room the viewers encountered art opening food and drink and the first of the chronologically ordered paintings (above). An audio recording, consisting of layered, echoed readings from various of my writings, provided sound track for the experience. The seriousness and obvious respect which greeted the exhibit had my tender ego soaring in triumph.

So is this it? Is life a series of mostly mundane daily experiences dotted here and there by major and minor triumph and humiliation? Probably yes, if the ego is allowed the role of dictator. But dissolve ego in the alchemy of awareness and stand indifferent to outcome, whether success or failure but rather bask in amusement at the fleeting earth dance and the enjoyment of simple being… and in the celebration of creativity.

We-the-People as Vendors

2010-01-31T19:13:00.000-08:00

In our society citizens are vendors, business persons. You have to sell something to make a living. The only product most of us have to market is our time/energy, our labor, which we sell to the highest bidder. Education and skill improve our competitive position as employees. Employers increase profits when they reduce or keep wages low. Most of us drudge away our sales day, at best making the best of it. Failure at or refusal to engage in business has serious consequences - the street being the ultimate enforcer, the bottom line.

So our life-blood is traded for whatever level of food, shelter, education, health care and entertainment, we can attain. But suppose these were givens, the goal in fact of our society as a whole, for all, instead of enrichment of the few, the clever and the ruthless?

Suppose we set out as a nation to solve this riddle: how to create a society whose top priority is the basics (food, shelter, education, health care) for every citizen, at a sustainable level - one which doesn't despoil the earth, air, soil, water? This as the driving force of our culture, to replace the pursuits of profits, privilege and power.

If this attempt were made anywhere else and showed the least chance of success it would be crushed, as it was in Nicaragua, Chile and other countries, by the United States. It has to begin here and before the momentum of patriarchal capitalism finally consolidates its power internationally.

It will happen when we elect state and national governments, and courts, who embrace these values. That can only happen if we-the- people first adopt them, which can only happen through grass roots education, which we best be about. The means to this, as I’ve said in other posts, is to be found, not exclusively but clearly, in the teachings of Eckhart Tolle.

WHO'S KILLING WHO THIS WEEK and WHY?

2010-01-07T11:52:00.000-08:00

What is happening in places like Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, Israel, the United States, where people kill each other with casual bravado?

Certainly some killers are acting out their own abuse as children. A particular political, religious or economic situation might be pounced upon as an opportunity for the release of rage. The psychopath sweeps lesser but like souls up in the frenzy, granted permission by a situation of chaos to act out. If the abused are in authority others go along or risk becoming victims themselves.

As children we learn to limit who we identify with to those of our own family, neighborhood, city, nation, race, class, religion. The them/us mentality is fertile ground for national, ethnic or religious conflict, aggravated by the abusive scenario and exploited by unscrupulous leaders.

Rulers try to direct the process, getting us to think of allies as tentative members of the home team, and rivals as not quite human. Rulers will naturally find dangerous those who advocate expanding identification beyond the state to the whole species. A people who considered all human beings family might limit a ruler's capacity to drop bombs, to dominate economically, or expand territorily.

Now how do we get directed into limited identification? In the U.S. the rulers behind the throne are those who finance elections. Naturally the well-heeled give to those who will do their bidding and withhold from those who will not. Since campaigning is incredibly expensive, anyone running for office unable to buy television time, newspaper ads etc; can't get the visibility to even enter the discussion.

Corporations and wealthy individuals, the prime financiers, can be counted on to support those who will serve their interests, who will maintain and expand their wealth and power. Since this same class owns the major media (television networks, daily newspapers, radio stations) they also largely control the debate. They will certainly not hire someone who believes that capitalism is inherently unfair, stacked against the mass of people in favor of the few. No, your career prospects are definitely improved if you think that capitalism is humankind's greatest creation.

If you for example thought that no one should own more than 500 acres of land, that income over $300,000 should be taxed at 100%...stuff like that. Well you need not apply for editor of the New York Times, columnist for the Atlanta Journal Consitutuion, CBS anchor etc; no matter how great an editor or writer or anchor you might be. So to those who are hired those ideas would seem completely off the wall, not serious, not worthy of discussion. They are excluded, not with a feeling of censorship but with a sense of responsibility.

When all the assumptions a population encounters, everywhere they turn, conform to those of the rulers then on that rare occasion when a non-conformist idea arises it seems quite crazy, readily dismissable. What is being described here is a subtle propaganda system. It is aimed primarily at those who are invested in the system, the middle and upper classes. For the rest there is stupefying television, sports, and other diversions - the occasional, carefully limited election.

There are differences among the rulers and those differences are mirrored in the media. In the eighties, some columnists thought we should send U.S. Marines to Nicaragua. Others thought we should fund mercenaries, the "Contras". Still others, the "liberals", thought we should just crush the Sandinista government economically. But virtually no columnist in the major media took the position that Nicaragua had an elected government and should be supported in its attempts at democracy, land reform, redistribution of wealth. Such a view was radical, not worthy of discussion, even unthinkable to many.

Also not included in the options toward Nicaragua was the possibility of non-violent conflict resolution, a meeting to seek a solution that benefits both parties. Washington always claimed to be trying to push Nicaragua toward democracy but beyond the rhetoric was a fear of democracy, fear of the example of a successful equitable society. Other countries might get ideas. People in the U.S. might get ideas. The upstart must be nipped in the bud.

This meandering attempt to address the opening question concludes with a tentative answer. Limited identification is one of the major factors that perpetuate war and injustice. Acquiring this trait is a matter of course in a highly indoctrinated society and it becomes lethal when exploited by those who wish to dominate others. When our primary loyalty lies not to any particular country or religion but with the whole human family and the well-being of the natural system that makes life possible then the killing will, at long last, stop.

The Ego

2009-12-29T21:28:00.000-08:00

The ego is a construct, a pseudo entity characterized by a boundless inability to empathize, which thrives on obsessive thought and shrivels in the light of observation, of consciousness. Ego is terrified by the thought of extinction and invents elaborate strategies toward safety: domination, superiority, violence, judgement. The non-pseudo self is accessible through presence, indeed is presence, non-verbal being, consciousness, where “safety” is felt/known in the recognition of absolute interconnection, where identification shifts from ego to essence, and empathy in the broadest possible sense is a given.

I am in the process of archiving my paintings, political cartoons and songs… and approaching some writing projects, seeing time as limited and wanting to sort things out… this is a kind of reconciling with death, with a limited life span, feeling a need to tidy up. On a more personal level I have changed (not eliminated… yet), as I have become aware of it, competitive, negative behavior in my relations with others and in my head. When I experience anger I am less likely to believe it, to act out. I am sometimes instead, the observer.

I tend to see what is difficult to change about myself a result of habit, years of “practice” behind the behavior so that changing it requires focused attention and awareness… specifically the mind-chatter behavior… my mind just runs constantly, habitually, and I find Tolle’s analysis that this is the root of dysfunction, persuasive, this is how the ego stays alive… and this is the beginning of consciousness when we become aware of our ego at work.

I basically come out of a leftist, materialist, existentialist stance. I had thought that the existentialist ‘level’ was it – the world is ultimately unknowable, we find ourselves in this scary, vulnerable situation for some chancy unpredictable length of time and then we die. I had dismissed my inherited religion earlier as so much wishful thinking and superstition. The optimum strategy came to me from Sartre, to be creative and take courage in the face of death and meaninglessness. He spoke at the United Nations once leaving a simple message:

1. Learn to think clearly
2. Think clearly about good and evil
3. Do good

So discovering something outside that ‘level’ surprised me, namely that we are not separate, as existentialism assumes. This came through experiencing being and feeling the connection called ONEness. At first I understood the second of Beyond War’s two precepts – War is Obsolete and We Are One, as referring to human beings as one species on one planet, that we need to expand our identification beyond just one nation to the whole human family to avoid extinction.

Eventually I saw the expansion of this to all life, then to all existence and finally to the primal consciousness or unified field of underlying reality. And Tolle’s refreshing clarity, to me, brought the exhilarating notion that the realization of enlightenment is not restricted to rare glimpses by rare individuals but is the natural state of being which we mask with egoic mind-chatter, the human dysfunction at the root of environmental degradation and war.

Head Trip

2009-12-20T13:14:00.001-08:00

I just remembered this morning that phrase, haven’t heard or thought it in years. Someone on a head trip might be someone who is out of touch with their feelings and so insensitive to others.
Under the influence of psychedelics people in the timeframe I’m thinking of were subject to good vibrations - music could send you into near ecstasy and a hug could feel soooo good. In the same way criticism or threats could bring scary waves of paranoia. Another drug term, mind-fucker, would be someone who exploited that vulnerability as a put-down artist, sadistically playing on people’s insecurities in order to feel a warped sense of superiority.
Psychedelics would somehow jerk you into the present with a raw intensity where, seeing things for the first time, the world was a marvelous place indeed, full of absolute wonder and delight. And threats. Beauty was very much magnified or rather, the world was seen as it is, a wondrous miracle including the realization of one’s own being in it. One’s psychology was also magnified and being shaped by a dysfunctional society that experience was not always pleasant. If your self-esteem was low, whether behind the mask of arrogance or the mask of shyness, one could be subject to fear, paranoia and panic.
In light of Tolle’s teachings I can now see the head trip language as referring to the ego created by the cultural belief that we are separate vulnerable entities, thus the fear. The bliss reported by many, however temporary, constituted an insight into the interconnectedness of all things. Feeling this interconnectedness produced the bliss or what Tolle calls enlightenment. The ego though, so established and dominating, and dependent on a belief in separation, could intrude into the well-being, distracting one from the interconnection conviction, sowing doubt and fear.
An artificial altered state amplifies it but the same process is at work in one’s daily psychology. Just this morning I was in bed, waking up, realizing I was thinking thinking thinking and breathing very shallow, even holding my breath as I thought. At one point I noticed I was reliving a pleasant memory and feeling mellow then became aware of holding my breath, took a breath, became present, yes, then started thinking again, this time remembering a social blunder and exchanging mellow for guilt, embarrassment, self-attack and the physical pain accompanying those thoughts. Who is the attacker I thought? Ego. Be the observer I said, and say.

Three Threats: Pollution, Over-Population and Nuclear (and other) WMD

2009-12-13T20:58:00.000-08:00

We face three threats to our longevity as a species and all grow out of the dysfunction of ego:

Global climate change will be minimally very disruptive and could escalate way beyond the worst case scenarios of only a few years ago: rising seas, epidemics of old and new diseases, agricultural catastrophe, shifting currents drastically changing climate, unprecedented refugee dislocations and more. On top of the climate change situation apparently chiefly caused by deforestation and the dumping of carbon into the atmosphere, there is the dumping of toxic chemicals into the air, soil and water, the loss of topsoil, the poisoning and depletion of the oceans, the extinction of species.

The planet, in some estimates, can sustain a population of 150,000,000 at a U.S. lifestyle. Obviously, at six billion and climbing, we are way beyond that and something’s got to give. The high-consumption portion of world population must make serious adjustments as must the population-escalating portion. The adjustments might be voluntary if the crisis is fully recognized, and soon. If not they will be involuntary.

Nuclear weapons, as well as other clever yet-to-be-developed (or perhaps just not yet public) Weapons of Mass Destruction, have the potential to kill millions and render large areas uninhabitable for long periods. The proliferation of these weapons is on-going and encouraged by intransigence on the part of the nations already in possession, hesitant to give up what they mistakenly view as security. Nuclear power plants are pre-positioned nuclear devices to a serious terrorist and helpful ingredients in the making of nuclear weapons. There are more than 10,000 nuclear warheads, some on hair-trigger alert and hundreds of nuclear plants with full-time cheerleaders committed to promoting the technology. Radiation is increasingly entering our planet’s life system. Radiation is a carcinogen.

Madness you say? You would be not mistaken. All of this suicidal behavior is driven by fear which is created by the mistaken belief that we are not intricately interwoven into the web of life but rather are alternately masters and potential victims of an indifferent and violent order. The nurturer of this bleak view is the ego, a pseudo entity that will sacrifice whatever it takes to find momentary safety and maintain the illusion of its own importance and reality. How to escape Ego? See the next post and/or read Eckhart Tolle.

The Liberal Media

2009-12-07T20:11:00.000-08:00

Interesting that there are literally dozens of right wing pundits with highly visible soap boxes from where they regularly condemn the “liberal” media. The liberals they attack, like Joe McCarthy’s subversives, are pretty hard to find. I suppose to them liberal is anyone who doesn’t slavishly, hysterically, promote their issues, which ultimately reduce to: the wealthy don’t really rule and it is good that they do.

Left/Right

The terms left/right are loosely bandied about in mainstream political discussion. Reading Michael Parenti I’ve come to the idea that the Right can be defined as pro-capitalist and the Left anti-capitalist. The sub-group, the religious right, is a staunch ally of the Right and is manipulated or co-opted by the dominant group. This is accomplished by exploiting the sub-group’s insecurity-driven desire, like their fundamentalist brethren across all ‘faiths’, to force their religious beliefs on others. The religious left is a sub-group of the Left but it comes to that position not out of exploitation by the dominant group but through an over-lap in values.

The heart of the U.S. Right is the tiny percentage of multi-billionaires and their closest associates who live in high privilege thanks to capitalism. A necessary percentage of their resources, in their view, must be expended to persuade as many of the other (lower) class as possible to invest emotionally in the system that serves them so well. To this end they maintain tight control over the media (through ownership), the congress and administration (through campaign contributions) and other institutional life by sitting on boards, tax-deductible gifts and various other strategies.

In the U.S., alternatives to Capitalism are discouraged by excluding such movements from the corporate media and by misrepresenting them on the rare occasions when they do appear. Extreme measures are relatively rare and unnecessary due to the effectiveness of the propaganda system. The murder of Fred Hampton in 1969 Chicago is a home example of what is more common in what is euphemistically called U.S. foreign policy.

To the uninitiated this may sound harsh but in a nutshell, the government channels aid, particularly military aid, to governments and elites who in turn provide a proper business climate for U.S. corporations, meaning, low wages, no or controlled unions, a tame media, access to cheap natural resources, and a military/police presence to enforce these policies against all ‘threats’. The home corporate media portray this arrangement in a way that assures a misinformed and thus compliant home population.

Moon Shine

2009-12-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

When you sometimes come out from under the trees and are surprised by a full moon, and you feel its presence, and your own in the pull of two forces, then are you in the moment and until fear pushes you back, you are en joy, the joy of being.
We cannot successfully amass an army to oppose the momentum towards extinction but we can enter the moment where the answer to what to do reveals itself in clarity.
No one is going to sound the battle charge, the bugle will not rouse us from our beds but in the luminous space where what happens happens, we will, grounded in the ONE life, whirl joyously in electron dance.

Tabling a Jackson Brown Concert

2009-12-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

Members of Nuclear Watch South, three of us, were invited to do an information table at a Jackson Brown concert in Columbus, GA last month. We set up early, before the crowds, and attracted ushers, who were mostly retired military (Fort Benning is nearby). They were friendly but their views were about what you’d expect: pro-nuke, both weapons and energy, pro-war, both Iraq and Afghanistan (though Obama was too slow in deciding to send more troops). Of course they were anti-Obama in general (they were all white).

Unfortunately they merely paced about during the concert so never heard the lyrics to some of Jackson’s songs that would have challenged their received wisdom. None had heard of him except one retired firefighter from NY who was I suppose Libertarian. He was anxious to distinguish himself from the vets. He commented that Europeans are laughing at our healthcare debate. They know that single-payer is off the table, the system they have in place that serves them well.

One resuscitated the favored complaint that the politicians forced the military to “fight with our hands tied behind our backs” in Vietnam (hard to defend in the face of the fact that the U.S. dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped on Europe in WWII). I asked him why he thought we were fighting in Vietnam. He said to stop Communism. I asked if it would be ok if the people decided to elect a Communist government. He hesitated but agreed that if they were so foolish well, let’em. I then told him about how the U.S. and its client in South Vietnam blocked elections called for in the Geneva Accords that ended the French involvement in 1954. Ho Chi Mihn was so popular that it was obvious he’d win any election unifying the country and this was unacceptable to the so-called freedom-loving U.S. government. Apparently you can elect any sort of government you like so long as it perpetuates elite rule. Any election with a differing outcome is “undemocratic” by definition. Thus millions of southeast Asians and 50,000 U.S. citizens died that a wealthy elite might rule over an impoverished population (and serve U.S. corporate interests, guaranteeing, cheap labor and access to natural resources – the template called U.S. foreign policy).

One exchange, getting heated, led to the following:
Usher – “we should believe the president.”
Me - “Even if he’s lying?”
Usher - “Yes!”
What can you say to that?

We were later ‘ushered’ backstage for a 15 minute conversation with the gracious rock star himself. He shared something he picked up on-line, that a Swedish 15th century galleon had been raised in Stockholm harbor. The state of the copper on board was forcing a re-evaluation of methods of storing nuclear waste since that stuff has to be isolated for time periods into the future greater than recorded history. You have to wonder why anyone would choose technology that leaves toxic waste around for uncountable future generations to safeguard when there are alternatives, particularly when those alternatives are cheaper, safer and available over a much shorter timeline. It may have something to do with boys and their toys - nonukesyall.org

Troubled Standards

2009-11-28T11:16:00.001-08:00

The Nation magazine ran an editorial 11/2/09 which pointed out the hypocrisy of congress taking action to forbid federal funding of ACORN, a community organization working to register voters and assist low income communities. The usual hysterical right wing pundits joined by their more "moderate" colleagues, had been attacking embarrassed ACORN for the stupidity or corruption of several of their employees caught in a “sting” operation. The worker’s actions were obviously reprehensible (and corrupt if they were paid by the lavishly-funded Right who conducted the ‘investigation’, to betray ACORN – given the outrageous nature of the sting this seems likely). The employees were fired and the hapless organization began the distracting, maybe impossible, task of repairing the damage.

The Nation’s point is that an embarrassing, outrageous but ultimately minor event produces a frenzied congressional punitive action, yet convicted felons continue to receive federal funds with no right wing pundit attacks, no sting operations and no congressional action to forbid future federal contracts with criminals.

Examples from the Nation article:

• Three war contractors: Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman were caught in 108 instances of misconduct since 1995 and paid fines or settlements totaling nearly $3 billion. In 2007 they made $77 billion in federal contracts.

• Phizer, a pharmaceutical company, paid $2.3 billion to fend off criminal and civil cases, including Medicare fraud. Yet they made $40 billion in 2008 profits and $73 million in federal contracts in 2007.

Apparently the double message is, if you try to organize low income people watch out! Make a mistake and your reputation is shot, funding evaporates and you’re banned from future federal contracts! If you make WMD, be sure to pad the budget to cover legal fees, fines and any other expenses that arise if you’re caught cheating. If you’re not caught, hey, it’s all gravy.

A post-script: the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a wire story November 25, reporting the results of an inquiry in Ireland where a Catholic Bishop and underlings had covered up child abuse, sexual and otherwise, by priests for years. This is hardly the first church scandal of this sort but since it doesn’t discredit progressives it isn’t likely to be amplified across the right wing pundit spectrum (It doesn’t need any exaggerating). The Right gleefully discredits an entire organization based on the misconduct of a few employees. It would follow then, to be consistent, that a large part of the church hierarchy participating in criminal conduct targeting children should discredit the entire Catholic church. We need to be skeptical and wary of all authority, hold all groups feeding from the public trough accountable but we also need to apply the same consistent standard.

Support the Troops?

2009-11-25T08:35:00.000-08:00

The drawing came out of an experience I had at a night club. A singer-songwriter trio of Nashville musicians was performing and one of them had a support our troops sticker on his guitar and stated how proud he was of his nephew for serving in Iraq and urged us to Support the troops – I wanted to shout, “Bring’em home!” but I allowed myself to be intimidated. That failure haunted me enough to compensate with the drawing.

The text below was printed on the flip-side of the drawing, a pocket-sized flyer I would hand out to folks at demonstrations and in parking lots. When I saw Bush or Support our Troops bumper stickers I’d leave one under the windshield wiper. The situation has changed somewhat with Obama’s ascendancy to the throne but the pressure to continue the violence option is pretty hard to resist, whether that pressure comes from the defense industry, ideologues or from within one’s own psyche.

The Bush Administration lied about the reasons for invading Iraq, claiming:

• that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and intended to develop nuclear weapons.

• that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and was involved in 9/11

• Both of these rationales were discredited by the 911 Commission. Despite this the White House continues to portray the war on Iraq as a war against terrorism.

Administration officials advocated for invading Iraq long before 9/11 as part of their fantasies of empire. The real motives seem to lie here and in the oil riches of the region. War profiteering is a predictable bonus for the administration’s friends & allies in the Military and “Security” Industrial Complex.

The Administration talks of “Freedom on the March” but this is transparent propaganda. Aside from the illegal invasion, measures contained in the Patriot Act and other Administration actions, such as ignoring a Supreme Court ruling on prisoner rights to legal representation, the torture scandal, dismissal of dissent at home and the alienation created by its arrogant relations to the world community put the lie to its pretense of promoting Democracy.

The Administration exploits fear of terrorism among the population to distract from its deeply undemocratic agenda. This agenda includes dangerous and expensive militarization, continued transfer of power and wealth to the already powerful and wealthy, and denial of environmental pollution that threatens the viability, even the survival, of our civilization. Administration policies harm our standing in the world of nations and undermine our security by creating resentment and animosity toward our country.

Join us in reclaiming Democracy: www.georgiapeace.org