Ruminations

2010-12-20T20:33:00.006+01:00

Here’s an observation by Charles Baxter in his review of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom:

“What has happened, I think, is that the public sphere is regarded here as a total loss, so that all the big problems are imagined as unsolvable. The result is a particular kind of despair, the sort that arises from rage with no outlet, the core emotion of a large proportion of educated readers during the George W. Bush administration. Corrupted by ruinous quantities of money and the cynical application of power, the public world depicted here seems incapable of saving anything of value. At every point where a citizen tries to enter that world, he encounters active lying and the operations of expedient logic, and, in the novel’s view, he becomes a collaborator.”

…and thus the ongoing dilemma…who would want to be a collaborator?

Yet in trying to share with others that sense of despair, in trying to communicate the rage behind it, one is constantly met with the exasperating rejoinder – well, what are you doing about it?.

The only honest answer, of course, for those like myself who remain firmly ensconced on the margins, is nothing…or very little, besides criticizing the seemingly infinite menagerie of the criticizable (or whining, as some folks would say, employing what just might be the most annoying word of recent times).

In short, one evidently should not criticize (complain, whine) about political/social/cultural phenomena unless one is not only prepared to, but actively engaged in doing something about it. --- which, to go back to Baxter’s description, would locate the now-legitimized doer in the realm of collaborator – at least according to that person’s own values.

…and so the long, drawn-out howl of rage, dissipating into despair, is heard echoing in some far-off distance in this, yet another winter of our discontent…like the tree falling in the forest of everyone’s favorite philosophical cliché…

sly, cunning, amoral...smart!

2010-12-01T11:14:00.003+01:00

Here's a Tom Hartmann quote (http://www.truth-out.org/stop-them-eating-my-town65481 ) that quite succinctly captures the exasperating arrogance (and maleficent ignorance) of "free-market" ideologues:

--In the worldview of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, everybody in the world is motivated purely by “self-interest.” There are the “smart” people pursuing their own self-interest (also known as “the rich”) and the “lazy” people pursuing their own self- interest by using an instrument of force (government regulations, minimum-wage laws, collective bargaining laws, and the like) to extract wealth from the “smart” people for themselves. These latter people are labeled by Randians and Friedmanites as “parasites” or “moochers.”--

There was a time when an argument could be made that such "smart" (which today simply means amoral) people were entrepreneurs, inventors, people with useful ideas who were motivated to implement those ideas and make life better for others...and the more they succeeded in doing so, the wealthier they become. That still may hold true for some. But in general, since the age of Reagan (an epoch we continue to wither in), the majority of those "smart" folks are simply the sly, cunning, amoral ones. Quite often, absolute shitheads.

...and thus the downfall of the American economy, the "American dream"...and American-style capitalism throughout the world.

microwave history

2010-11-17T16:03:00.003+01:00

I really like this quote from Maureen Dowd's column today in the NYT:

"Together again were the president and vice president who invaded, deregulated, overspent, created a climate of fear and intensified the class divide with tax cuts — all so recklessly that our resources are sapped just as we need to step up and compete with our banker, China."

It's taken Bush 2 years of hiding behind the right wing idiocy barrage to emerge...now that he thinks it safe, now that he thinks, in accordance with Cheney, that "history is beginning to come around"...this after two years...history.

Odd view of history...but soon "history" will cook and emerge faster than a meal from the microwave

exponentially mounting absurdities

2010-11-06T12:52:00.007+01:00

A friend is currently representing a city council in its attempt not to be pre-empted by a Second Amendment-extremist-inspired state law in terms of firearms regulations. Interestingly, the case hinges on the right of the city to its political autonomy vis-à-vis the state in terms of gun regulation. Gun rights advocates are always screaming about states’ rights in this matter. This case turns that relation on its head within a state.

In any case, it's a tough fight. The second amendment does more than guarantee the "right to bear arms"...it guarantees the "right to fear", the "right to be afraid", the "right to perceive the world and one's society in a Hobbesian light"...

You can take away Americans' jobs, their homes, their health, a presidential election, their life savings, their pensions, their chances for upward mobility...and they will remain docile enough for those behind those heists to remain in power (indeed, to put and keep them in power)...but threaten to take away their "right to fear"...compel them to show some valor, some courage...and they'll be all over your case....

Damn if the Grand Inquisitor wasn't right about the need for miracle, mystery and authority. The holy trinity indeed.

Has it, alas, always been this way - in the sense that whenever one concludes that things couldn't get any more absurd, new absurdities make the earlier ones seem tame? I am thinking now of the great neo-liberal (in the European sense of the word - meaning "free market" fundamentalism) heist, and the vociferousness with which everyone from Tea Party types to "respectable" pundits are screaming for more more more free market, and less less less public sector power. This after the repeal of Glass-Steagall oh so surprisingly led to the almost complete destruction of international financial stability and viability, thanks to the thoroughly-to-be-expected greed and ineptitude of the private sector...financial stability that was only partially saved (for how long??) through the wholesale purging of present and future public funds in the US and much of Western Europe...with the consequence that public treasuries were hit by the double-punch of suddenly monstrous deficits and drastically reduced tax revenue due to the crisis...alas!, what a great time for right wingers to argue for deficit reduction! Which I would expect from them, being blind ideologues far more radical and anarchistic and certainly anti-American than any Weatherman from the 60's (and infinitely more destructive)...yet it's not just those right wing ideologues, it's also the corporate media in general...the NY Times never misses a chance to feature another bit of drivel about the terminal problems afflicting the European welfare state (which was doing just fine, thank you, in terms of fiscal stability (far better than the US) before the latest implosion).

the sun slowly setting on American democracy

2010-11-04T10:02:00.004+01:00

The pathetic elections have provided an answer to the question posed in the last post. No, there is no way to avoid that conclusion. Corporate idiocy, foaming-at-the-mouth greed and ignorance...a mass of spoiled children running amok in their hand-made hell, figuratively gnawing on each other's heads...ah yes, the American electorate.

Goodbye to Russ Feingold, one of the few decent people in American politics - defeated by dollars, hate, stupidity, fear...ah yes, the American electorate.

How does a thinking person avoid being drawn into the inevitable vortex of Ambrose Bierce-ville? Where are today's Menckens?

Are there any grown-ups in the American corporate press? Does anyone at the NY Times really reflect, just for a moment, on the daily foolishness posing as "all the news that's fit to print" on their front page?

..."toda la pobre inocencia de la gente"...sang Mercedes Sosa...the poor innocence of the people"...yeah, right. There is nothing innocent about "the people". They are a mass of frightened, pathetic fools, who rabidly cling to their ignorance like a hungry dog its bone...who prize, cherish their ignorance, who worship it as their one true god, and who in the end will erect their own Tower of American Babel out of the brick and mortar of their own bristling stupidity.

¡Hay que joderse!

fatal flaw?

2010-09-21T10:22:00.000+02:00

What does it say about America - or democracy in general - that elections can be "bought"? What does that mean? More money spent on a campaign doesn't buy better policies, nor better arguments or presentations, nor better candidates. It simply buys exposure - most importantly on tv - which is inevitably shallow and most often based on manipulating fear and insecurity, making copious use of logical fallacy. Most paid campaign publicity is an insult to the intelligence of the citizenry…and yet it works!

I’d like to put forth a question: is there any way to avoid the sad conclusion that Jefferson and his peers were simply naïve?

2010-09-02T01:31:00.002+02:00

Sometimes one runs across the perfect quote. I just did...from a Matt Taibbi piece in Rolling Stone back in 2009:

...in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy...

Stunningly true.

let em eat cake with their tea

2010-06-20T09:56:00.003+02:00

As the idiocy goes on - the people behind the NY Times lead online page seem to have completely lost their wits, with ideology-tinged blitherings leading the site for two consecutive days this week (one about Obama's "overreach" when dealing with corporations, the other stupidly wondering just how big is the Gulf oil disaster...smaller than it seems, they would have it)...with all this idiocy, there's always Frank Rich. He came up with this gem today: While the greatest environmental disaster in our history is a trying juncture for Obama, it also provides him with a nearly unparalleled opening to make his and government’s case. The spill’s sole positive benefit has been to unambiguously expose the hard right, for all its populist pandering to the Tea Partiers, as a stalking horse for its most rapacious corporate patrons. If this president can speak lucidly of race to America, he can certainly explain how the antigovernment crusaders are often the paid toadies of bad actors like BP. Such big corporations are only too glad to replace big government with governance of their own, by their own, and for their own profit — while the “small people” are left to eat cake at their tea parties.

Damn straight.

2010-06-18T09:42:00.004+02:00

Once again, more neo-liberal foolishness from the NY Times. Today's lead "news analysis" is entitled "Obama's Twist of BP's Arm stirs debate on Frequent Tactic" - that frequent tactic being the exercise of public power over corporate incompetence and malfeasance. The writer - David Sanger, cites several examples of this "frequent tactic" - firing the CEO of General Motors after it was saved from bankruptcy by public funds, forcing Chrysler into a merger (again, after public wealth, or at least the chimera of public wealth saved it), curbing executive pay at banks that were bailed out (the overreach!...the overreach!)...all of this, in fact, being put forth in that irritating way the NYT has of displaying clear ideology in the guise of "objective reporting".

Finally Obama makes some moves - timid given the situation - to stop corporate power from pushing the USA off the edge towards total decline. And this raises the question of government overreach. This after weeks of articles analyzing the perception of Obama as weak and unable to tackle the barrage of problems facing the nation.

It is almost psychedelic that so many blithering idiots on the right accuse the NYT of having a "liberal bias"...meaning, of course, a left-leaning bias. Putting "neo" in front might save these people from their ignorance...if indeed they knew what neo-liberal means.

Textbook Case

2010-05-14T15:31:00.002+02:00

A rapacious private sector (in this case that large part of it comprising the financial "industry") is unleashed from intelligent regulatory control. Over the course of a decade it artificially creates a massive amount of false wealth (for which it charges handsomely) that inevitably leads to an acute, worldwide economic crisis caused by the inevitable disappearance (or rather, realization of the non-existence) of that false wealth. Said crisis has a profound effect on the public finances of countries throughout the world - not solely due to severe drops in tax revenues (caused, again, by private sector mismanagement), but in part by the questionable practices of large financial players doing business with governments. In order to sanitize their budgets, governments must make substantial cuts in social spending, while increasing taxes where politically viable (read: social services, govt. employee salaries, etc.).

This then leads to an outpouring in the corporate media of questioning the viability of the "welfare state". Somehow, the evident failure of the "market" to properly and intelligently manage world finances is totally ignored, with the blame placed on public sector inefficiency (see the NY Times, http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/the-twilight-of-the-welfare-state/?scp=1&sq=welfare%20state&st=Search for a good example).

Clearly a textbook case of ideology (in this case, neo-liberalism) trumping reason and evidence.

Demonstrably false

2010-02-09T15:16:00.004+01:00

Today's NY Times ran a front-page (or rather home-page) piece, the headline for which is demonstrably false. The headline claims that the "U.N. Climate Panel and Chief Face Credibility Siege".

Hmm, well that does sound like important news, given that these were the folks who shared the Nobel Prize some years back with Al Gore, and are probably the most public face for climate change science in the world. If they are facing a "Credibility Siege", well then, the reasonable reader might surmise, perhaps the credibility of global warming science should be placed into doubt.

A quick read of the piece, shows, however, that the "siege" is coming from a few far-right corporate news sources in Britain, from one Christopher Monckton, "a leading climate skeptic" (what makes him "leading", it would seem, is the propensity of these corporate news outlets to quote him), and from an organization called the Science and Public Policy Institute - clearly another cooked "news and opinion" factory paid for by the industries to be affected by any climate change legislation. In short, spin factories twisting the truth and contaminating the public debate, working directly for large economic interests.

It doesn't take many minutes of online research to determine this. However, the spin-makers know that this will not commonly happen - that this "news", blessed with the imprimatur of the NY Times, will be picked up by the rest of the corporate media and spread like wildfire - not to mention serving as more fuel for the idiocy-spouting hate-mongers of Fox, etc.

If you read into the 8th or 9th paragraph of the Times piece, it does give Dr. Pachauri (the head of the Panel "under siege") a chance to defend himself from the perverted smears being thrown at him. But in general, the story is a great example of the typical twisted use of "objective" journalism. Objective? Bullshit. Absolutely atrocious (and dangerous!) journalism by the so-called "liberal" (huh?) NY Times.

shit

2010-02-05T08:39:00.001+01:00

I’m not keen on ascribing grand inevitabilities to the human condition, nor all but the most basic fixed qualities to human “nature”. After all, our most outstanding quality is that which places us in contrast to nature. “Man-made” tends to signify as an antonym to “natural”.

Why then, do I feel compelled to note the maxim that shit always rises to the top when thinking about the good folks acting as executives at Goldman Sachs or AIG, etc. Or about those smooth talkers and quick thinkers working as lobbyists for some amoral power group or another.

After floating up there a while, the shit does inevitably decompose and sink to the bottom. But alas, this metaphor is beginning to decompose itself…

Shame

2009-12-15T10:56:00.004+01:00

Is there...has there ever been?...a more nauseating politician on the national scene than Joseph Lieberman?

I doubt it.

Men like this are the catalysts behind the decline and fall of the country where I was born.

Shame on this man.

Shame.

History outdoes parody

2009-12-13T10:51:00.005+01:00

So in the end, it would appear that the Honduran "business class" (the euphemism most commonly used in the corporate press) has succeeded in simply removing an inconvenient president - inconvenient because he had an attack of scruples and social solidarity. Granted, it wasn't like the good old days, when such a leader would simply be killed, but effective in the long run. Send the military to carry the man out of the country in his pajamas, refuse to seriously negotiate with him or his representatives, a bit of the old "mano duro" applied to his supporters, and then a sham election that supposedly "brings back democracy". Impressive.

More impressive still was the Obama administration's (and State Department's) handling of the issue. Not heavy-handedly pro-coup as in the past...no, now we are supposedly in a new epoch. But even with mild pressure from Washington, the coup organizers would have had to yield. The Administration's utterly disingenuous response? - "you call the US imperialistic all these years, and now you want us to intervene in the internal politics of a sovereign nation...this is a problem for the Hondurans".

Right. For one of the first times in history, Washington has a chance to truly and effectively apply pressure to "defend democracy" in Latin America, and they are suddenly overwhelmed with concern for a nation's sovereignty.

And so does history once again outdo parody. The great "defender of democracy", the country that cynically and falsely employed that rationale for decades in support of tyranny, suddenly loses its taste for democracy-defending when the use of such a term could legitimately be applied. And this under Obama.

¡Hay que joderse!

2009-12-04T10:01:00.002+01:00

A few years have passed now since the wave of anti-religious books written by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, et. al. appeared. Those works were guaranteed to stir up a sizable reaction - and indeed they have. In fact, the media is now trending towards the religious faith defenders - most of whom, curiously, do not seem to be conservative religious reactionaries. In general, rather, they seem to fall into the politically moderate-to-progressive camp, and may range from left-wing Christians to "tolerant" agnostics. All seem to conclude that Dawkins and the others offer simple, reductionist arguments, and many seem to be miffed by the atheists' apparent disrespect for people of faith. Given that "respect for people's faith" is a well-embedded part of what is considered to be "acceptable discourse" (except when that faith leads people to take out tall buildings), the media are naturally drawn to these "defenders of faith".

Now it is time for people of reason to respond. I would like to go into this in more detail in the future. For now, I'd like to quote a fellow named Troy Jollimore, from a book review on Truthdig: "In her more radical mode, Armstrong wants to preserve religious talk from questions of truth—in our ordinary sense of “truth”—by draining them of content. But when we lose content we do not only lose truth, we lose meaning as well. The apophatic retort to the skeptic, then, seems to reduce to: “You don’t know what you’re talking about—indeed, I don’t even know what I’m talking about. So how dare you contradict me!”

Here he is referring to the tired argument that religious concepts are simply beyond our understanding - humans cannot grasp the ways of God - that faith defenders offer when confronting reasonable challenges to the inconsistencies and absurdities abounding in all the major faiths. Thus, Dawkins etc. are "simplifying" the issue by ignoring the ineffable nature of the subject. One cannot deny what one cannot understand.

One is tempted to bang one's head against the wall when confronting such claims. That's why I find Jollimore's words so enjoyable...

2009-07-31T10:20:00.006+02:00

Krugman begins his column in the NYT today as such: "At a recent town hall meeting, a man stood up and told Representative Bob Inglis to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” The congressman, a Republican from South Carolina, tried to explain that Medicare is already a government program — but the voter, Mr. Inglis said, “wasn’t having any of it.”

Over the years I have encountered a wide range of willful ignorance. Usually such ignorance is related to something quite close to home - one's own behaviour or history (selective memory), the tendency to blind oneself to the negative qualities of loved ones, etc. Second-order examples would include religious and/or nationalistic beliefs that lead one to willfully ignore real-world evidence.

I am, however, astounded by the breathtaking ignorance shown by so much of the U.S. population concerning health care reform. This embarrassing blindness extends from the stop-think dismissal of national health programs in the rest of the industrialised world ("socialist...leading to lines and delayed care...lack of choice...inefficient,etc.") to the current proposals for U.S. reform. A sorry spectacle - millions upon millions of people frothily arguing against programs that would directly benefit them and their loved ones. Opposition to any changes in the current system is understandable from the elite - those wealthy enough to fly over the health care mess and not have their lives conditioned by health care worries, or those who are, and have been enriching themselves at the expense of the not-so-fortunate masses (the entire health care industry). One can understand the reticence of congress members (who belong to the above groups) to stand up to major sources of campaign funding. The moronic posturing, lies and manipulation of Fox news (and similar) is also comprehensible.

But regular Americans?

Yet another hang-over from the Cold War years. Anti-communism as a religion has had a remarkable effect on today's realities, even decades after that absurd ideological overreach has been able to work off any kind of foil. The entire worldwide radical Islam movement (and, consequently, the perversion of western democracy as a reaction) is clearly rooted in "Western" efforts to stimulate and support such movements against "Soviet" interests. Irrational anti-communism also provided political cover and fuel for the insane neo-liberal excesses that led to today's (and, alas, it would seem, tomorrow's) financial problems (in many ways, but most notably in the deregulatory excesses witnessed from the early 80's to last year).

Finally, the anti-communist overreach also created a Frankenstein of anti-government sentiment in the U.S. Just how far will it go, I wonder.

2009-04-19T10:40:00.003+02:00

It would seem logical and quite in keeping with "nature" that the wealthy and the elite would find myriad ways of justifying greed and the lack of solidarity. It makes little sense for the powerful to feel guilt over their position (indeed, such guilt or shame is what keeps a multitude of capable people from accumulating such wealth). It also seems fitting that greed-justifying writers, intellectuals and politicians (who may or may not directly belong to the economic elite itself) would be handsomely rewarded, lavishly praised and supported in many ways by that elite. John Kenneth Galbraith famously wrote in this regard that the modern conservative was engaged in the pursuit of finding a superior moral justification for greed.

"Justify our place atop the pyramid...even if our official, religious-based morality reminds us that there is something terribly wrong about large accumulations of wealth in the face of extreme poverty and suffering", they might say... If only to alleviate their consciences and allow them to feel good about themselves. But the usefulness of greed justification obviously goes beyond helping the rich sleep better. When Naomi Klein insists that Milton Friedman's economic theories were quite "profitable" (indeed they were!), she is pointing out that not only are such intellectuals well-rewarded for their work, but that the elite they serve are also freed to accumulate far greater wealth and power. For this to occur, the greed-justification theories must also somehow appeal to the much larger numbers of poor and middle-classes.

Now this is quite a trick, given that the economic policies (including a war-like foreign policy) that free the elite to accumulate more wealth almost universally work at the expense of the poor and middle classes. The question for the powerful has always been: how convince the overwhelming majority of people to wholeheartedly support our right to cynically exploit them - even to the point that they are willing to kill and die for this right?

And that brings us back to yesterday's closing rant about the current anti-taxation movement. The Obama adminstration is working to lower taxes for the vast majority of Americans, and raise taxes on the wealthy (to a point that would bring them close to what they were under that great socialist Reagan). So we are treated to the spectacle of thousands (what some columnists are calling an Astroturf, rather than grassroots, movement - given that it would seem to be rather manipulated and artificial, the manufacture of consent, as Chomsky put it) of protesters out in the streets, in the guise of "patriots", many working and middle class people crying out against raising taxes on the rich.

What?

...ok...so they're idiots. But all those folks working in the corporate media who are rousing them to action? The Fox News contingent? Are those people real? Did they come from outer space to fuck with our heads (the graphics and production style would seem to support this theory). In any case, as an athiest, this pains me...but since I simply cannot imagine what would make so many people work so hard towards such an utterly fucked-up end...I'm left with begrudgingly having to admit of the existence of evil. Only evil could let such things happen...But what the hell is evil? Is it possible to define that concept without immersing oneself in the religions again?

looking foward cross-eyed

2009-04-17T20:36:00.001+02:00

Watching the television news at lunchtime…hmmm…a case of willing suspension of disbelief?...a cynical exercise in ironic distance?...well, here the satellite company offers quite a full menu, from Spanish public TV news to the Spanish version of CNN (much higher quality than the international version), to BBC international (better still)…down to the weirdly hallucinogenic, futuristically frightening, empirical-proof-of-the-existence-of-evil Fox News (apart from the twisted, perverted, hateful politics, it’s just so damn ugly!), to the international French news channel (quite good), to Al Jazeera (in general, journalistically outstanding)…

In any case, we come upon the news that the Obama administration, after fully admitting to the prisoner treatment atrocities and war crimes committed by the CIA, has also fully absolved all those involved in said crimes. No point in dwelling over the past, they say. Better to look to the future. I’ll bet those folks who sat on the hot seat at Nuremberg before swinging on the noose wish the world would have been so “forward looking” back then.

This was followed, almost in sequence, by another piece concerning the Administration’s approach to Cuba…loosening up a bit…ah, but of course no thought about lifting the embargo. Hell no. As mentioned by an Administration spokesperson, the Cuban government must make some human rights progress first. Now, while the (CNN) newscaster was reading this news, I watched her face. I may have been imagining this, but she seemed to go just ever so slightly cross-eyed. Talk about cognitive dissonance! Or, ahem…was there? Is the world so utterly stunned, dazed, atontado, ajillipollado…so as not to be knocked on the head by this painful piece of hypocrisy? And this not from the Bush Administration any more…but from the sainted Obama Administration. ¡Hay que joderse!

By the way, has anyone noticed that the project (best illustrated by the Republican Party in general, Fox News and other corporate media giants, etc., and many others) which involves trying to convince the lower-to-middle classes (the massive majority) that their interests are the same as the ultra-rich - just keeps going on and on? I’ve always been amazed by this process. The elite have always done this - how else is less than 10 percent of the population going to lord over the other 90 percent?. But since the age of Reagan and Thatcher, I can’t help but marvel at how absurd and preposterous this project has been and continues to be. The latest example are these anti-taxation “Tea Parties”, organized, it would seem, by Fox News itself, but with substantial support from a good number of blithering idiots. I don’t know…my bafflement and rage are quite beyond words for today…better to take up the subject in another entry.

ontological rant in the court of the imagination

2009-01-19T13:04:00.003+01:00

The defendant stood before the judge in the hushed courtroom. He began speaking.

“I plead not guilty, your honor. In fact, I cannot but plead not guilty. My “not guilty plea” is nothing but the product of neuronal activity within my head. Even though I do feel a bit guilty about having caused the death of my loved one with that chop stick, that guilt has no practical effect on my plea. Even though I would have preferred to avoid her death, I had no direct control over the act. In fact, every time I am using the word “I” in this sentence, it is only for semantic reasons, for there is no “I” in the sense that the court commonly understands it. There is only an agglomeration of cells functioning as a unit, said unit representing nothing more than the gross accumulation of causes and effects within, and without. In fact, as I shall show, the movements associated with the physical entity labeled “I” were nothing more than the utterly unavoidable series of causes and effects, emanating from outside this body, setting off the pertinent internal string of causes/effects, issuing in an overall external physical act which, in sum, was but another cause to the effect, or consequence, under the court’s current consideration.

I would like to remind the court of a number of issues pertinent to my defense. A cursory look at the legal record, as well as at prevailing punitive law, shows that society grants the existence of different levels of responsibility for the acts of its members. Different punishments are meted out for taking another life, depending on what the court assumes to be the degree of intent of the killing. Courts look upon premeditation as proof of the highest degree of intent, of responsibility. From there we move down to premeditation with certain levels of just cause (self-defense, hunger, etc.). Next on the descending scale of responsibility are killings done in a state of passion. From there we go down to the myriad levels of insanity pleas. Finally, there are killings that can be said to be entirely accidental. All imply a number of elements – a sense of control, independent will, a clearly defined and existent self – in formulating the level of intent and responsibility. Note that at the lower end of this scale, the element of choice, of individual, clear-headed decision making leading to the act, becomes less and less applicable…until, in the case of proven and unavoidable accident, it is inapplicable altogether.
I would like to submit to the court that the same lack of individual will, or free choice, applies also to the most cold-headed, thoroughly deliberated murder. I challenge the court to identify, in a pertinent and rationally acceptable manner, the element that distinguishes murder in the first degree from accidental homicide. The court will no doubt bring up the autonomous self, the “free will”. But can the court really show physical evidence of such phenomena? I claim that it cannot. Contemporary brain science is revealing the physiological functioning of the brain, and of its relation to bodily movement – or behavior. What we can clearly demonstrate is a highly complex system of neurological, electro-chemical activity, a universe of causes and effects. Yet there is nothing in science that has clearly identified the active, individual, “morally autonomous agent” within all this.
If I could claim that I was clinically insane at the time of the killing, you would lower my sentence. If I could claim that another person literally forced me to shove that chop stick up the nose of my wife, you would lower my sentence, or even declare me innocent.
If believe that I need no such countervailing claims. The body that is identified as “me” did indeed commit the act in question. However, you are unable to reasonably show that there is a “moral agent” within this body to assume guilt. The court has only shown a series of causes and effects.”

The judge looked on in increasing annoyance, as did the jury. “Sir,” said the judge, “do you really expect us to take that argument seriously?”
“I’m sorry, your honor”, replied the accused. “I was unable to argue in any other way. I am thoroughly determined to argue against free-will…I am thoroughly determined…it…I…the force…oneness…”
The eyes of the accused began to dart back and forth across the courtroom, as he quickly lost composure.
He continued, his voice growing louder and louder. “There is no I!...and all of you!!...there is no “you”…you fools!!...” A bit of spittle began to form on his lips. “Everything you do is determined…everything!!...it is all laid out…it is all there…!....IT IS WRITTEN!!!!

He was wrestled to the floor by several guards as the last words echoed throughout the chamber.

“We hold the defendant guilty as charged.”

I scream, you scream, we all scream for torture

2009-01-17T14:25:00.002+01:00

So upcoming Attorney General Eric Holder becomes the first “official” (i.e., law-relevant) voice to admit that water-boarding is torture. A nice breath of fresh air, one would think. As the Times reporter puts it, “In the view of many historians and legal authorities, Mr. Holder was merely admitting the obvious.”

Right. Making people undergo atrocious physical and psychological suffering is torture. What do you know. After 8 years of reality-denial and the weird kind of reality-derangement of the ruling party in the U.S., finally, it would appear, we have people who tilt ever so slightly more towards respect for the empirical.

Ah, but let us remember, Times reporter Scott Shane writes, all the problems such an admission of reality entails…Ah yes, the stickiness…the problems. As in, employees of the United States government, with orders directly from the White House, committed empirically verifiable war crimes. War crimes – according to the treaties and laws to which the U.S is itself a signatory.

All this, of course, making people squirm…one could feel the reporter squirming for them…

Now, in any decent world, criminal investigations would immediately be initiated, very possibly involving most of the highest members of the Bush administration, and very possibly resulting in war crime prosecution, and prison for these people.

The establishment squirms…

Why do they squirm, one might wonder? Apart from the practical political inconveniences of seeing establishment figures treated as war criminals, I think the squirming results from a certain ambiguity about the acceptability of torture itself. In general, many if not most people believe that torture is an acceptable tool for getting information. Apart from the fact that most professional interrogators deny this, I think that most laymen intuitively believe that anything is justifiable if it may possibly uncover information leading to the avoidance of other violent acts against innocents. Ah, yes, when directly questioned, most will not admit this…especially anyone in positions of legal responsibility… Thus the absurd rhetorical twists and turns by officials when testifying about water boarding…thus the many statements by Bush and others in his administration that “we do not torture”. Of course they were fucking torturing!...as Cheney, to his minimal credit, now openly admits.

Frankly, I think that many in the power structure in Washington either openly or secretly believe in the acceptability, indeed necessity, of torture. And thus, the squirming…even on the part of the “liberal” NY Times…

This rather barbaric stance spurts out openly when the perpetrators of war crimes are not Americans – witness the almost universal Congressional support for Israel’s latest clampdown in Gaza – a sentiment that runs against the almost universal condemnation Israel is receiving around the world. Unqualified support for absolute barbarism is easy when others are engaged in it…no realty-rearrangement or violence against logic/semantics necessary. This is what the pride- and religion-drunk idiots of Hamas don’t seem to get. Neither the rulers in Israel, nor their North American patrons, could give a flying fuck about war atrocities if they can in any way be justified by “protecting the country from enemies”. And those idiotic missiles Hamas seems intent on shooting at Israelis are just the ticket.

One wonders why the world bothers with such concepts as “international law”, “human rights”, etc. Obviously, when push comes to shove, or when it is in the interest of some powerful elite, rights and law are quickly forgotten.

Oh that the new political power structure in Washington were able to investigate, prosecute and punish those who spent the better part of 8 years defecating on US and international law, on the US Constitution…the same power structure that gave carte blanche to those whose fevered greed and cynicism led to such wreckage in the US and world economy…ah, sweet dreams…

Alter-xmas

2008-12-30T10:41:00.002+01:00

Well, it’s that time of year again…the time to celebrate something other than miracle, mystery and authority, guilt and submission (ie., xmas)…

This year I hereby proclaim the 1^st of February as “Celebration of Reality” day, wherein we celebrate the plenitude of life as we and those around us actually experience it. Wherein we celebrate all the joys and sorrows, all the triumphs and defeats, all the love and loathing that life offers us. Wherein we celebrate ourselves as decent beings, based on our acts, based on wanting to fulfill our desires without doing harm to anyone – at least as far as we are able. Wherein we realize that we are all worthy and good people deserving of love and respect – as long as we do not lose that worthiness through our own selfishness. That we start out neither better or worse, superior or inferior to anyone else. And wherein we realize that we do not have to invent whole other stories and explanations based on metaphysical fantasy and impossible-to-understand gods who tower above us and make us feel small, afraid, and bad about ourselves – not to mention hateful and distrustful towards others with other kinds of “god-stories”.

In short, “Celebration of Reality” day is a day for feeling ok with ourselves, with our world, in spite of all its faults and shortcomings, a day for reaffirming to ourselves, each and every one of us, our desire to be as decent and loving as possible, while recognizing ignorance and injustice, and being willing and able to work against it.

Dustbins and Weathermen

2008-04-18T13:30:00.007+02:00

Ah, history will be the final judge...but who will judge history? Which ideas are in the "dustbin of history", preserved only by those guttersnipe thinkers who find truth in officially discarded concepts... and which ideas sit upon the mantle, nobly looking down upon those intellectual guardians of what the comfortable classes call "reality"?

The Times recently ran two illuminating pieces in this regard. The first was a yet another look at Milton Friedman’s work – a kind of half-hearted attempt by the “paper of record” to recognize the general world-wide rejection of free-market absolutism…although in the end, the article leaves us with the feeling that Friedman’s beautiful truth – that the “market”, on its own (read: those with economic power) will always function more effectively than an economy subject to government oversight and regulation - will in the end prevail. Poor Milton, the article suggests, would be filled with sorrow to see, after a few little economic storms, how quickly the world resorts to government interference.

Well, to hell with that. From the beginning, free-market doctrine was no more than a throwback to an earlier stage of capitalism, when crafty and unscrupulous elites erected massive fortunes on the backs of millions, and finally drove their own economic system into the ground…to a time before capitalism itself was saved by more intelligent and far-seeing leaders. The application of this “neo-liberalism” from the 70’s onward has caused untold suffering around the world, while leading to greater accumulations of wealth (and, importantly, media power) in the US, Europe, and among the tiny elites of developing countries. And finally it has come home to roost in Friedman’s home country, as first seen in the savings and loan scandal of the 80’s, driven clearly home by the atrocity of New Orleans during and after Katrina, and finally convincing even the Wall Street Journal types that uh, ok, government intervention was needed, now, to stave off a complete financial collapse. Free-market discipline for the mass of citizens, indeed, but instant government bail-out when the financial elite fuck up, which they inevitably do…

In short, it is quite difficult to understand how anyone at this point can still accept Friedman’s basic view. It simply goes against logic, common sense and repeated experience throughout history. Economic power, when left to itself, serves its own interests. And why not? That is indeed its purpose and goal – to increase itself, as fast as possible and to the greatest possible extent. Good arguments can be made that a corporation is not acting properly when it makes decisions based on any other criteria than that of the maximization of its profit, of the value of its shares (and of course of the pornographic remuneration amounts to its chief executives). Corporate social responsibility, corporate spending on “culture”, corporate charity, etc., corporate self-policing in terms of the social impact of its operations (fair pay to employees, workplace safety, local investment, environmental responsibility, financial prudence, etc.) – all of this makes sense only if these activities somehow reflect on the bottom line. And thus, we see what we see – a world in which humanity holds the key to universal well-being through reason, technology and cooperation, yet a world that plays host to massive unnecessary suffering, poverty, exploitation and injustice. The unfettered (or less-than-effectively-regulated) “free market” is driving us directly over the edge at breakneck speed. And one has to have those ideological blinders firmly locked in place to not see this…

What could possibly account for the willful wearing of such blinders?...one quite useful explanation can be found, if we are willing to go back to that “dustbin of history”…or as that haughty imbecile who also appears in the Times, William Kristol, put it the other day, to a book “that now must lie, unopened and un-remarked upon, on an awful lot of rec-room bookshelves.” He is, of course, referring to Marx, the memory of whom he hilariously resurrects when addressing Obama’s supposed elitism (old cold-warriors never die, they just get more and more absurd). Quickly taking the cue and acting on ideological reflex, Kristol equates Obama’s comment on how economically oppressed citizens “cling to guns or religion” with Marx’s famous “religion is the opiate of the people” line. Fantastic. Tacking Obama to the (albeit quite accurate) words of the preacher of his church (what the fuck?), and linking Obama with an ex-member of the Weatherman…hmmm, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing here…when all else fails, might as well red-bait the guy…even 20 years after the end of the cold war. For Christ sakes, have they no shame? Well, uh, no. They don’t. And the egregious Hillary is as bad or worse than the Republicans on the matter.

One looks upon all of this, at the state of political discourse in the U.S., and is simply dumbfounded. Why has the “official line”, or those parameters within which mass media discourse can occur, become so utterly incapable of seeing, hearing…feeling? Well, the Marxist would not find this at all difficult to understand. Elite power views things in its own interest. And elite power also has the ability to greatly influence, if not completely form, mass opinion. From this perspective, of course free-market doctrine makes so much sense – what elite wouldn’t want complete freedom to do what he or she wants with their power? What elite doesn’t trust his or her own judgment in doing things right? Governmental interference in the economic activities of the elite, by definition, goes against those interests.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how utterly idiotic it is to remove all kinds of objective (public) power from economic activity. It sounds and feels good to those whom that kind of freedom serves. And they are the very people who have the power of influencing mass opinion.

Yeah, Marxism can be pretty useful in understanding things. Unlike the irrational drivel that passes for admirable economic theory under the name of Friedman-inspired free-market doctrine.

Hyprocrisy and the Horror

2008-04-16T09:53:00.006+02:00

As much as I try to defend "democracy" against the dismissals of my "anarchist" friends here in Spain, I am left continually aghast at what I see in the major political campaigns. The latest angst-inducing affair, of course, is the volcanic eruption of idiocy and perverse hypocrisy set off by Barak Obama's comments on the Democrats' problems with white, working-class voters. In answering why these people tend to vote again and again for manipulative, cynical politicians who then proceed (since the Reagan years until today) to ream them all up the ass economically, Obama reasonably explained that they were"bitter over their economic circumstances, and cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them". Well for fuck's sake, how true. Yet suddenly we've had to withstand an onslaught of judgments by comfortable politicians and journalists, accusing Obama of "elitism". And we've got the horrendous Hilary Clinton blathering on about her family's deep, sincere faith, about her fond memories of daddy showing her how to shoot a gun...etc. Absolutely nauseating. If there were any doubt before, none is left. If the Democrats are pathetic enough to nominate this woman, I will not be able to vote....this after spending the better part of last year pleading with my skeptical Spanish friends to...vote!

2007-10-22T09:43:00.000+02:00

Writers refer to certain groups as "people of faith". Here they are referring, of course, to those who openly profess their religious belief. The contrary, logically, atheists, agnostics, etc., would be, I suppose, "people of no faith" (o ye of no faith!). Those of us who "believe" in what we see, hear, feel, taste, smell...in information that we read or are told which conforms to certain criteria of "believability" - acceptable (reasonably believable) empirical evidence presented in a reasonable manner so as to hang together (long live Mr. Rorty) in a reasonable way... are the "faithless"...No need for faith here, apart from a certain notion of "faith" in the workings of our brains in relation to the outside world, and in the apparent congruity between how my brain relates to that outside world, and how others' do.

People of faith appear to accept certain propositions (existence of God, in certain manifestations, with a certain cosmological, ethical, etc. system) with little to no evidence. Indeed, it seems that precisely the lack of clear empirical evidence and logical presentation/argument is what makes this particular acceptance something called "faith".

We are living within a macro-system (speaking especially in terms of economics) that would seem to be "reality", not "faith" based. Yet, upon an even cursory overview of the current situation, one can easily wonder...what the fuck are these people in suits all over the world thinking? Great gushes of wealth are spreading throughout the world (while still filling the bank accounts of those crafty slithering amoral freaks on top), enough to create ever-new markets of masses ravenous for the latest manifestations of "wealth"...based almost entirely on financial structures without a solid material base. The international financial system reaches a point of deep crisis, thanks to the need to fill the market with a glut of baseless credit...and the central banks simply shrug it all off, saying no problem, here's another 30 billion here, another 35 billion there. Huh? Do they have secret warehouses of this shit?

"A faith based economy". God help us.

an old letter to a friend

2007-10-11T20:41:00.000+02:00

Just going through some old emails I found by accident, and this one struck my fancy. I wrote it to a friend just before flying back to Spain from the States back in November, 04, just after those wonderful elections...in fact, the last time I was in the "homeland"...

Here goes:

As I read over your last musings, I wonder if Viagra, or rather one of those anti-depressants might be the drug of the zeitgeist. (And not just for horrified progressives). I think what we have here is a case of confusion fatigue. Contemporary American life just does not leave most people the time to ingest all that is going on - the complexities of a buzzing and rapid-fire plurality in a sped-up digital world. Not while they have to work 60 plus hours a week to pay for those snazzy cars, health care, and other modern amenities. Most people want things just "simpled down" to coin a phrase. Bizarre re-workings of ancient metaphysical fairy tales, boiled down to appeal to fear/hate/need for belonging to something bigger/self-worth, etc, are just the trick. Rationality is naught but a nagging stimulous to anxiety. Who wants that? That's what fascists of every stripe have always known. That's what cynical power players have always known. That's what Dostoyevsky was writing about when the Grand Inquisitor tells a silent JC that what most people need is Miracle, Mystery and Authority.

Well, that's what so many millions of Americans voted for the other day. And they'll vote for it again.

It makes me wonder how, at certain times, certain leaders are able to gain popular support by appealing to people's sense of decency, hope, compassion, fairness, justice, sincerity, humility...and even their own self-interest. I think that such a thing can only be done with Reason, rationality, neatly and cleanly separated from metaphysical magic. Clearly, Christianity and other religions like to claim the above mentioned elements for their own. Indeed, there are many Christians whose behaviour reflects such "values" (what a dangerous and meaningless word that has suddenly become!). But until the great majority of citizens can connect with these elements through simple experience and common sense (ie., these guys are totally fucking up the economy, and that is going to fuck me, and/or, these guys are clearly leading us into a more violent and unsafe world, or, I cannot afford health care and must think twice before bringing my child to the doctor, etc.)... until people can face up to simple reality without comforting fairy tales inviting them to abandon any form of critical thinking, then religion in general will only serve for what it has generally served for up until now - to cause millions to confuse their own interests with those of their cynical rulers...

Hmmm...three years have passed. I see that things are getting more interesting in the country of my birth. That bizarre right wing coalition of wealthy creeps and deluded fundamentalists just might be breaking apart...ah, hope springs eternal from the human breast...

2007-10-11T10:27:00.000+02:00

Festoons! I've figured out a way to get back into this blog, which has been closed for the past 5 months. Not that I have anything even remotely interested to share today, apart from the fact that it is an abnormally beautiful fall day in southern Spain, that my upper right molar is throbbing in pain, and that I am off to the studio to continue mixing the next El Doghouse album. I also found a host of old email from a previously unavailable old address, and remembered a good friend, Buddy Burniske, who died this past spring. Buddy was a ball of energy and firmly attached to this world. He was also a great teacher and a good writer, who often shared his work with me (as I did with him). Hopefully I will use his memory to get back going with these entries. Hugs to anyone who may run across these musings. Hasta pronto.

idiots

2006-12-20T10:09:00.001+01:00

This is what Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior United States commander in the Middle East, has to say about the "terrorist" (read oil) wars there: More troops will not solve the problem, but only increase it..."I think our structures for 21st-century security challenges need to adapt to this type of an enemy...The 21st century really requires that we figure out how to get economic, diplomatic, political and military elements of power synchronized and coordinated against specific problems wherever they exist.”

The same NY Times front page has Bush once again foaming at the mouth about increasing the number of troops in the U.S. military, and a number of quotes from other high power idiots insisting on sending more American troops over. This list includes "responsible" Democratic leaders. All in the confort of their offices, or some other site where these creeps spend their time talking to "journalists"...meanwhile, the poor, misguided men and woman already over in that hell continue to be killed (or to go on savage killing and/or torture binges that further engulf the image and reputation of the U.S. in deep and lasting disgrace)...

Idiots.

Hay que joderse.

reflections on a grey day

2006-11-03T09:02:00.000+01:00

A great chasm, a profound emptiness resides within each one of us. It is an unfathomable void that must be addressed in some way. The one truly universal challenge we all must face – the creation of ourselves. Yet authentically facing up to this fearful task seems to lie beyond our capacities. It produces dread, fear, angst and severe insecurity – all of which must be overcome in some way in order to function in this life.

How we cope with this task is the great determiner of our personality, of who we are. The huge majority among us are led away from our true condition by early childhood socialization and education. We are taught roles; we are shown the molds within which we must operate. The world around us is defined according to the particular social environment we live in. We are offered the relatively easy escape of simply connecting the dots of a life that has been pre-drawn for us. We come to accept simplified codes of behavior, all clearly defined. We identify ourselves within the matrix of these codes. We are a son, a daughter, a student, a high achiever, a hard worker, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a father or mother, an employee, an American or Spaniard or Russian or Chinese…a Christian or Muslim or Jew or Hindu, a citizen, a consumer or person of business. All of these roles fill the chasm, or at least construct an internal edifice that serves to block it out of consciousness.

All of these roles, of course, require a kind of faith, an unquestioned acceptance of the qualities and characteristics of each particular role. Opening them to question not only undermines their psychological and social value, but can also seriously threaten the security of others employing the same roles if such open reflection is externalized.

Thus do the great majority of us avoid authentically confronting our greatest challenge as conscious beings. And thus does the mass of humanity continue blinding itself to our one truly universal condition – thereby creating divisions, clashes, fear and distrust of the other, hatred, war…

2006-07-05T11:29:00.000+02:00

broken bread

Love

2006-07-05T10:47:00.000+02:00

I must admit to having become quite uncomfortable with the word "love".

I know...that sounds terrible.

This is not some sort of bitter response to love sickness, rejection or heartache. As in, "I'll never fall in love again", or some such thing.

This is simply a product of experience and reflection.

Romantic love...ahh!...that devious manipulator of the will, so skillful at cloaking the effects of boiling hormones into poetry...

...clearly, this kind of "love" is much closer to hatred than any kind of "friendship".

In fact, "love" does not reside in the same house as friendship...unless we re-define the word into something along the lines of "very close friendship"...which, in the end, is "friendship", not heart-bedecked "love"...

Then we have the purveyors of various faiths equating their respective gods with "love"...or shall we write "Love"...as in "God is Love"...

That certainly sounds innocent enough...unless we commit the phrase to the most rudimentary analysis (omniscient, omnipotent God coexisting with untold evil, suffering, misery, injustice, etc., etc.) = "Love"...yikes!!...someone, save me from such "Love".

I recently had to sit through the oration of an Archbishop. Our gospel choir (a quite secular routine, believe me) was invited to sing during the mass at a seminary, and I foolishly agreed. We were placed up front with the Archbishop and what seemed like an army of priests (my grandfather would be spinning in his grave), so I had to sit there expressionless as we listened to this man - whose hateful politics label anyone who doesn't "love" the way he and his cohorts in the Vatican have currently defined as acceptable as "unnatural" and wrong...even sick - go on about "Love". Lots of incense, lots of low humming harmonies from the priests...and nothing whatsoever showing that this man knows anything about the real life that goes on around him. His kind of "Love", and that of Christians in general, somehow fits with hatred of the other, harsh judgments, perverse visions of hell for all those who do not follow the line (virtually everyone, in their private life), not to mention war, murder, torture, etc. etc.

I'll pass on their kind of "Love", thank you.

As I will on the more secular, but no less socially problematic kind of "love" - that exercise in unabashed selfishness directed at the heart and soul of another person.

Telling the World

2006-06-21T22:29:00.000+02:00

People have been getting on me for not writing more entries here.

Evidently, once you set up a blog, you have to keep filling it with some sort of text on a consistent basis, whether or not you actually have something remotely worthy to say.

Hmmm. I have sinned. Not having anything of particular interest to add here, I haven't added a post for many moons. I suppose I could have. I mean, as always, there's plenty to rage about. Yet I prefer to have some kind of particular angle on a subject before setting forth to tap tap tap the keyboard.

So what's today's particular angle? Let's see...

I love today's headlines concerning the Republican party's strong defence of its Halliburton mafia benefactors. I enjoy giggling when I encounter some fool still going on about something called "moral values" that supposedly led minions of blithering idiots to vote for these banally evil shitheads. Moral values. Yep. Support our soldiers as they torture, kidnap, and enter into what are most likely daily exercises in war crimes in their good work as defenders of whateverthefuckit is they are "defending".

This cannot be stressed too strongly, nor repeated too many times: in the name of all Americans, people are TORTURING, KIDNAPPING AND DISAPPEARING PEOPLE, AND COMMITTING MASSACRES OF INNOCENT PEOPLE ON A REGULAR BASIS (this last according to the poor fucker who is currently leading the Iraqi "government"). This has been going on for long enough. There is simply no legitimate way that Americans can claim any kind of moral or ethical superiority over their "foes". And that, my friends, is more important than you think.

On teachers and students

2006-03-24T20:07:00.000+01:00

I recently received a letter from an old student of mine. She was in one of my philosophy classes some 16 years ago. Over that time, she has advanced far in her university studies, and is now herself a professor of legal philosophy in Brazil. Heartening news to receive.

Some of her words are well worth repeating here in terms of the degradation of the U.S. as an example for the world. I quote:

“The political situation in Brazil is in fact very interesting but also full of tensions and contradictions. At the same time that democratic forces are taking root and causing many changes, we still have a very strong authoritarian tradition that emerges even among these such called democrats. Fortunately, this is not as frightening as what is
happening in the US today, something that is very bad in many ways for Latin America. Here in Brazil, for example, constitutional law has for a long time looked up to constitutional law in the US, at the US Supreme Court. But now we are like orphans, because all constitutional parameters, even in the Supreme Court, have been shaken. In a different way, though, this is very good because at least some people will understand that we must not look up to any "fathers" but rather try to construct something of our own.”

I am particularly impressed with her last words. Indeed, this is happening all over the world. Those seeking to improve upon democratic structures no longer look to the United States as models…and that’s just fine.

Perhaps, at some point, in a near or far future when decent, thinking North Americans once again assume political power, they will be able to look upon all of this work in order to improve upon their own model. In the end, that’s the way it should be. No country as the “political leader”. No “political heroes.” Just humanity looking to create an ever more just, open, tolerant, mature and thriving world.

Morbid fascination vs. sexual enlightenment

2006-03-24T13:02:00.000+01:00

Not long ago I saw a bioflic covering the life of Alfred Kinsey. It’s a well-done, if perhaps romanticized treatment of the life and work of this amazing biologist from the last century. Amazing because he so clearly transcended the dictates of fear and superstition, ignorance and social pathology in attempting to place human sexuality under scientific scrutiny. The film covered the inevitable reactions to Kinsey’s work, his difficulty in obtaining funding, the mad-dog criticisms, the mass-denial. But in the end we are left with hope that objectivity and science can triumph over unquestioned taboo and ignorance.

Hell no. Half a century later, a Google-search of Kinsey turns up a host of sites dedicated to criticizing and disproving his research and conclusions…frenzied, foaming-at-the-mouth denunciations of this supposed “pervert” (that’s always a great word – pervert…one immediately imagines drooling old men lewdly contemplating innocent children). In short, nothing has changed. Human sexuality continues to elude the application of common sense and practicality. The great majority continue to squirm at the mere mention of something sexual. Mass spasms of social unrest are set off because a woman’s breast is mistakenly uncovered during a televised football game. Homophobia wins another election for what is clearly the worst administration in U.S. history. The clearly demented Catholic church hierarchy perform witch-hunts for homosexuals. That same institution continues to demand of its misguided flock that it avoid the use of birth-control (thus directly contributing to the deaths of millions by AIDS). One of the most (supposedly) advanced countries on earth defines sex-education as abstinence-education. Abstinence. HA!

What did Kinsey do to stir up such nervousness? He simply found a way to get hundreds of thousands of people to talk frankly about their actual sexual practices, and compiled the results. You see, what they are ridiculously calling “moral values” strictly prohibits such a thing. It is much more “moral” to simply ignore what is most likely the strongest natural influence on our behavior. This way, reality can have no effect on the notion that all “normal” people are heterosexual individuals who never masturbate and have sex (which is strictly limited to coitus, of course) only for procreative purposes. All of this in line with what the Christionists believe is their god’s stern rejection of sexuality.

Of course, keeping such a liberating force as sexuality under wraps is quite useful for social control (see Foucault). Yet we cannot blame the long-lasting mass hysteria about sexuality on some explicit conspiracy of the elite (an elite, mind you, which throughout the ages has never, in any place followed the horrendous dictates of sexual repression). No, there is something about sex-phobia that sells – the great, quite heavily-tapped market that appeals to morbid fascination. Fact – people like sex, in all its many creative forms. And I would venture to say that this applies to the overwhelming majority. Yet complete sexual freedom tends to remove the morbid fascination from it…leaving only the healthy experience.

I believe that reality-based sexual freedom (meaning an open acknowledgement of what people actually do, along with the acceptance of any non-damaging, consensual sexual practice that is non-manipulative) would in time lead to the disappearance of pornography, prostitution and other such manifestations of the “morbid fascination” market, along with a tremendous reduction in rape and sexual violence in general. It would also greatly reduce the terrible suffering inflicted on so many hundreds of millions today and throughout history, people who have been made to hate themselves because of their natural desires.

BUT OH NO! We can’t have that. Nope. Not with the “moral values” set continuing to impose their pathological squirmishness on the rest of the world. ¡Hay que joderse!

Wake Up?

2006-02-23T14:33:00.000+01:00

I see where they are referring to the latest swell in fundamentalist religiosity (read: mass, fear-based fallback into escapist, hypocritical, hatred-of-the-other superstition) since the 70's in the States as the "Third Great Awakening". Huh? Since when does "awaken" apply to self-immolation into irrational, mass hypnosis? The kind of twisted stop-think that has millions of poor souls politically supporting people in power whose policies work directly against the very interests of those millions..."Awakening"...¡Hay que joderse!

Speaking of irrationality and thought systems that work against the very self-interest of those who partake in them..Yesterday, Islamic militants blow up an important Islamic shrine (according to news accounts, anyway). Does this spark any mass protests (apart from those particular Muslims whose shrine was destroyed)? Of course not. Do repeated reports of barbaric treatment of prisoners, mass civilian deaths as the result of wars of aggression, ad nauseum spark such rabid mass protests? Not really. But badly drawn, unfunny cartoons poking fun at yet another sky-god...why, time to scream bloody murder!

Pathetic.

Just pathetic.

Now, whose interests, praytell, do such manifestations serve? Why, the "clash of civilizations" set, that's who. You know, those "intellectuals" enlisted in the newest great crusade, either directly or indirectly serving the arms industry, along with the energy mafia it is really meant to protect, and the financial-shenanigans industry it has likewise spawned.

Clash of civilizations...break out the bullshit dectector, folks! There is a clash, but it's not between the "Muslim" and "Judeo-Christian" worlds. Within all of those parts of the world, there are secularists,atheists, folks with faintly religious leanings, the devout, and fundamentalists. There are those who want more, and those who settle for less. There are the powerful and the not-so-powerful. There are shitheads and good folks. The clash, in the end, is between decent people with their values grounded in experience, history and collective human knowledge. The tolerant. The live-and-let-live. And those who stimulate and stir up tribalism, hatred of the other, infantile patriotism, irrationality and fear in the service of their own ill-gotten power...and those who would allow themselves to be led in such a way. To use older terminology - the fascists versus the anti-fascists...

That's today's real clash...

Hmmm...

2006-02-02T02:00:00.000+01:00

So Bush mentions in his "State of the Union" speech that the U.S. must reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil...huh? How, praytell? Through the use of alternative fuels, renewable resources, mandating auto manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles? Cmon!
No...that's certainly not it.

I've been scanning the press, and no one seems to have made the connection...where get the oil? Why, closer to home, that's where. And where might closer to home be? Well, Canada and Mexico are both major oil exporters to the States...but the real motherlode happens to be in Venezuela...

Right...subtle hints at where the next war is to be fought.

Mark my words.

Hyprocrites, Zealots and Priests, oh my!

2005-11-23T13:12:00.000+01:00

They should learn from Sharon. Even that sadistic zealot - and the Israel defense apparatus in general, realized long ago that trying to scare the shit out of their enemies just created more enemies who are all the more willing to kill themselves in the name of their own zealotry. Anyone willing to kill oneself for a "cause" is certainly not going to be deterred by the possibility of torture, etc. As I've mentioned before, the only conceivable explanation for the U.S. government's open admission to torture and other crimes against humanity is, firstly, that they can, and secondly, that it will serve to deter the enemy through fear. They need only ask their closest ally in the Middle East.

Speaking of zealots, I've seen progressive journalists and opinion writers using the words "draft dodger" recently to describe people like Cheney and Bush, et. al. Now, it is understandable that they would want to drive home the utter, unabashed hypocrisy of these people. But "draft dodger" has built-in negative connotations derived from its use during the Vietnam war, when it was used to describe those who refused to participate in that war. The left should not be falling into the trap of throwing a negative light on all those who refused to fight in that horror show. While it is useful to shed light on the hypocrisy of Cheney, Bush and the other chickenhawks, it should be remembered that it isn't their decision not to go to Vietnam that is worthy of criticism, but their decision to send thousands more to kill and/or be killed for a less-than-justified cause.

And while we're on zealots, the Ratzinger Church hierarchy has reached a new level of absurd hypocrisy with its latest "no gays" edict. In fact, it's pretty funny. One can easily imagine so many of those sleazy old bastards squirming in their seats during the reading of the text...

Now, according to this document, the good, Christian, decent, loving Church directors must "evaluate all of the qualities of the personality and assure that the candidate does not have sexual disorders that are incompatible with priesthood" Sexual disorders. Jeeezus. This from an institution that has been denying and rejecting any healthy form of sexuality for as long as anyone cares to remember. Then, when, accordingly, the huge army of gays inside the church are forced to closet their desires even more, the text accuses them of "an inauthentic attitude that does not correspond to the spirit of truth, loyalty and availability that must characterize the personality of one who considers himself called to serve Christ"...Christ. Poor poor Christ. Truth, loyalty and availability. Absolutely hilarious.

Bonzo vs. Mr. Smith

2005-11-22T03:26:00.000+01:00

While meandering through the satellite tv's film offerings today, I ran into the end of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington...you know, where Jimmy Stewart is raging, quivering with fiery goodness, in front of the senate, jumping on the case of all those haughty, corrupt bastards that surround him with suits...and you can hear his voice get shakier and shakier...his face takes on the kind of mad, sainted glow that could well be part of some religious agitprop film (jeez, how Capra used light and focus!)...but of course not at all religious...just a regular, decent guy flung into the snakepit of mainstream politics, flipping out with the slime and shit, and standing up there and giving hell (a filibuster, no less!!). In less than thirty seconds, I was brought to tears (I knew what was coming, which made those tears flow all the more quickly and easily)...

...and I think...what the hell went wrong? Why did America choose Bonzo instead of Mr. Smith? And how have these goddam bonzos managed to claim some kind of moral high ground? Moral values...whatthefuck!!!? Shit and greed and shit and torture and ignorant revenge fantasy manipulation all wrapped inside a redwhiteandblue flag with that time-old torture symbol thrown in for good measure (you know that one...the cross). And they get enough votes to win again (he he he...or did they?)....

America chose Bonzo and his children over Mr. Smith and his progeny...

...and now all the world is paying the price.

2005-10-08T11:52:00.000+02:00

future wine

mayhem

2005-10-08T11:28:00.000+02:00

Horrid times, indeed. I certainly feel for sensitive, decent folks trying to remain sane while living in the States. But hell, these times also dish up a steady diet of hilarious news bits - from virtually anything that flounders out of Bush's mouth to any and all attempts by the "Krish-chun" right to sell itself as "moral".
In any case, this one from today's NY Times was particularly worth a yelp of laughter:

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation on Friday to outlaw the sale to teenagers of electronic games featuring reckless mayhem and explicit sexuality."

"Reckless mayhem and explict sexuality". Jeez. As opposed to "thoughtful", "cautious" or "prudent" mayhem.

Mayhem. Good word.

Gotta keep the kids away from reckless mayhem...and, "Hey, c'mon!"...god knows from explicit sexuality...

Meanwhile, no problem having the majority support the wholesale ignoring of the Constitution, or becomming inured to the systematic use of torture by those acting on their behalf (you know...the "moral" ones).

The cited video games are creepy, but not due to their reckless mayhem or explicit sexuality (you can find that at almost any given moment at some mass-culture feeding point). It's that they present an asshole's view of the world...leading one to the question - why are they so popular? What has occured in cultural evolution to bring us to this point? Why do so many people, young and old, get such a thrill from virtually assuming the role of fucked up shitheads?

2005-09-18T09:32:00.000+02:00

How many billions do they say will be directed at rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf coast? Eighty-something billion dollars. Huh? Just whereinhell do they come up with that wealth? Sure as shit not from the bulging federal treasury...which is basically imploding into a netherworld of future financial disaster.
So what do we see right away? Cozy-assed corporate shits belonging to the same rancid mafia cashing in immediately on this newly minted wealth. Did I hear the name Halliburton? Who's in charge of this "great effort" from the White House?...none other than everyone's favorite christofascist faker Rove! Warms the heart.
So we have a new New Deal for the South, with money popped into existence suddenly...most or all of which will fall into the greasy hands of greedfilled wretches...most or all of which will, of course, be financed not by U.S. corporate (or individual) taxes, but by China and other governments trying to keep the incredible shrinking dollar from breaking the levies of the international financial system (and that lovely American market from morphing into depression nothingness)...all of which, supposedly, must be paid back (will American troops be called out to quell the next Tiannamin Square uprising?).
Oh, right. Let us not forget that much of the relief money from contributions goes into a fund highlighted by Pat Robertson's "charity" (which channels half of the cash back into its fascist tv network). Good ol' "let's kill president Chavez" Pat...this, while Chavez himself offers more in material aid than most of the supposed "Christian" groups combined...

Finally, we're treated to the speculator spectacle...armies of shitheads (neo-carpetbaggers?) scouting out flooded properties for cheap deals...ah, what a wonderful New Orleans shall rise from the muck! With the speculators in the lead!

Fucking hell!
¡Hay que joderse!

2005-09-03T22:05:00.000+02:00

thinking...

what the fuck?

2005-09-03T21:44:00.000+02:00

Might it be possible for thinking people to still argue for "free-market" politics (what the Europeans call "neo-liberalism"? This when the generalized privatization of everything in the U.S. economy has, of course, led to ever-more-Brazil-like contrasts in wealth/poverty, one of the industrial world's highest crime and encarcelation rates, a level of national debt that dwarfs that of Mexico, Brazil and Argentina before their respective crises (ironically, it's China that's keeping the U.S. economy afloat, by purchasing billions of dollars in U.S. bonds...will China act like the IMF and World Bank, sternly insisting that north Americans "tighten their belts" and start functioning with fiscal responsiblity? I doubt it).

And now this spectacle...an entire week goes by with hundreds of thousands of people abandoned to their fate, without food or other basics, with no escape out...and not enough public resources to mobilize. Not enough public buses to get people out...but of course, no need whatsoever for Greyhound or Continental to mobilize. Why should they? They might lose money. So the world looks aghast at the U.S., with every day bringing another reason to forget the United States as any kind of reference for decency or even practicality. Even Chavez is on the tube, talking about helping out the new wretched of the earth...in the States. How it is that Bush and his supporters can look themselves in the mirror, I do not know. As Maureen Dowd put it today - the United States of Shame.

"Conservatives"?

2005-08-30T11:08:00.001+02:00

From the time of the "Reagan Revolution", I've always marvelled at how this political movement could get away with labelling itself "conservative", or "patriotic", while deriding anything remotely progressive in the U.S. as "anti-American". Check this out. "They will pass godly legislation, defying Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state... We're going to force a constitutional crisis... If necessary," he said, "we will secede from the union." This from a group of crazed Cristofascists planning on taking things into their own hands, as it were. It's worth posting the whole story here (from the L.A. Times, Sunday, 28 August).

A group of believers wants to establish Scriptures-based government one city and county at a time.

Greenville, SC - It began, as many road trips do, with a stop at Wal-Mart to buy a portable DVD player.

But Mario DiMartino was planning more than a weekend getaway. He, his wife and three children were embarking on a pilgrimage to South Carolina.

"I want to migrate and claim the gold of the Lord," said the 38-year-old oil company executive from Pennsylvania. "I want to replicate the statutes and the mores and the scriptures that the God of the Old Testament espoused to the world."

DiMartino, who drove here recently to look for a new home, is a member of Christian Exodus, a movement of politically active believers who hope to establish a government based upon Christian principles.

At a time when evangelicals are exerting influence on the national political stage - having helped secure President Bush's reelection - Christian Exodus believes that people of faith have failed to assert their moral agenda: Abortion is legal. School prayer is banned. There are limits on public displays of the Ten Commandments. Gays and lesbians can marry in Massachusetts.

Christian Exodus activists plan to take control of sheriff's offices, city councils and school boards. Eventually, they say, they will control South Carolina. They will pass godly legislation, defying Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state.

"We're going to force a constitutional crisis," said Cory Burnell, 29, an investment advisor who founded the group in November 2003.

"If necessary," he said, "we will secede from the union."

Burnell has not moved to South Carolina himself - he promised his wife that they would stay in Valley Springs, Calif., until the end of next year - but believes that his 950 supporters will rally to the cause. Five families have moved so far.

Burnell said his inspiration came from the Free State Project, which in October 2003 appealed to libertarians to move to New Hampshire for limited government intervention, lower taxes and greater individual rights. By 2006, organizers had hoped to have 20,000 people committed to relocating to New Hampshire; so far, 6,600 have said they intended to make the move, and only 100 have done so.

Christian Exodus, Burnell predicted, will be more successful.

"There are more Christians than libertarians," he said.

After scrutinizing electoral records, demographic trends and property prices, Christian Exodus members identified two upstate South Carolina counties - they will not officially say which ones - as prime for a conservative takeover. By September 2006, Burnell hopes to have 2,000 activists in one county and 500 in the other.

Frank and Tammy Janoski have settled into a five-bedroom house with white vinyl siding in a new subdivision in rural Spartanburg County.

"This is where God wants us to be," he said.

Janoski, 38, a self-employed computer engineer, had been contemplating moving from his deadline-oriented lifestyle in Bethlehem, Pa., to a more conservative region with cheaper housing and lower taxes when a church friend handed him a Christian Exodus flier.

"What attracted me to the movement was the idea of calling back the country to a righteous standard," he said.

His first six months in South Carolina have been idyllic, Janoski said. Not only do his neighbors wave as they pass by, but they also share most of his conservative Christian beliefs.

"If you're going to secede, this is the place to do it," he said. "A lot of the locals have that spirit."

Although Christian Exodus members are confident that they can capitalize on evangelical disillusionment with the Republican Party, local observers are skeptical.

James Guth, a professor at Furman University in Greenville who studies the influence of religion on politics, does not think that Christian Exodus will be successful beyond a county level.

"South Carolina is a state that is dominated by Republicans," he said. "Although there are people on the far right edge of the Republican Party … in general, the population is a big fan of Bush."

Nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, upstate South Carolina is the most conservative region of a conservative state: Bush won 58% of the South Carolina vote in 2004, and Greenville is home to Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian college that until recently had banned interracial dating.

Cleatus Blackmon, treasurer and director of missions at the Greer Baptist Assn., which oversees 39 Baptist churches in Janoski's town, doubts that Christian Exodus' focus on taking over government bodies will appeal to the majority of the region's Christians.

"You don't find the word 'control' in the scriptures," he said. "The basic mission of the church is to proclaim God's redeeming love through the example of Jesus Christ."

But Christian Exodus activists insist that they will forge ahead, even if they end up polarizing the Christian community.

"We want to separate the wheat from the chaff," DiMartino said. "There's a lot of deception in the church. If the Republican Party says something, a lot of churches say it's gospel."

Despite its cynicism about the Republican Party, Christian Exodus plans to use the party's popularity to its advantage. Rather than running for office themselves, Christian Exodus activists hope to influence which Republican candidates win local primaries.

"All we have to do is put our guy on the ballot with an 'R' sign," Burnell said. "It could be a corpse and they'll vote for him."

Local Republicans, however, point out that they would never sit idly by while Christian Exodus took over.

"He talks about 2,000 activists, but I can easily get 4,000 activists," said Bob Taylor, a Republican Greenville County councilman and a dean at Bob Jones University. "There's incredible dedication to the [Republican] cause."

While many South Carolinians may oppose abortion and gay marriage, Taylor said, few would support secession.

But DiMartino is not worried about the naysayers.

When he explained Christian Exodus to the man who sold him his home in Pickens County, he said, the salesman gave him a high-five. DiMartino looks forward to living alongside Christians who want to put local government back in the hands of what, he believes, America was really founded for.

"Whether it flies or not," he said, "is really in the Lord's hands."

Now really, with "conservatives" like these, who needs radicals?

Meanwhile, for a bit of levity, check out this link: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-dinosaurs27aug27,1,7272573.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

silly shitheads and perfect scripts

2005-08-25T00:20:00.000+02:00

I've been telling people for a while now that the next big target for the American military/industrial complex (read: Halliburton, et. al)/ Cristofascist mafia would be Chavez and Venezuela. It's just too perfect: a strong and popular political leader dedicated to uniting Latin America, with relatively progressive economic and social tendencies, leading a country full of oil, a friend of Castro...mixed with the situation in neighbouring Colombia (devil drugs, evil commie revolutionaries in the mountains allied with the devil drug dealers, etc.)...it simply seemed to be a script pre-written for the bastards to convince 'mercuns' of the drug/commie/oil danger to the south...the only thing missing was the radical Islam terrorist link...Send in the Marines, dammit!!...and what a great way to remove attention from Iraq...slowly remove all troops, keeping only a small contingent to help the private armies (Halliburton, et. al.) prote ct the oil fields...It would work perfectly! Evil drug-running commies led by a dark-skinned Castro lover...people (and the mainstream media) would forget about Iraq within days...just in time, perhaps for the mid-term elections (perhaps Rove should moonlight as a writer of international intrigue novels)...
So, in the end, the words of this silly shithead Robertson did not surprise me...and when I went to his website, the final ingredient was there!...evil drug-running commies ALLIED WITH ISLAMIC RADICAL TERRORISTS!. Lions and tigers and bears...oh no!!
No thought, of course, is given to the fact that Chavez and his ideals are considered, openly, a much bigger enemy by radical Muslim fundamentalists then the creepy Christian blue meanies who supposedly oppose them. No need for such reflection.

So...how long before the Marines are landing on the shores of Venezuela?

2005-07-07T10:16:00.000+02:00

The Good and the Bad

2005-07-07T09:56:00.000+02:00

History as it unfolds is odd.
A federal judge sends a reporter to jail for not disclosing her source.
Bad.
That reporter is Judith Miller, a NY Times reporter who did as much as anyone to hype the war with faulty reporting. In fact, when the Times "apologized" some time back for their coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq war, they were surely referring to Miller's bad journalism (although it went unsaid).
Good.
It seems quite clear that the source being protected is Karl Rove, one of the most dangerous and evil men ever to roam the halls of the White House. This "patriot" told reporters that a certain U.S. diplomate working overseas was actually a CIA agent. This was the inimitable Karl's way of punishing a dissident among the ranks of chickenhawks leading the Christian soldiers on to war. The federal inquiry is now closer to nailing Rove thanks to the judge's heavy-handed tactics. This horrible character will surely (??) have to resign.
Good.
But...jailing a reporter for not revealing a source?
Clearly bad.

nationalism

2005-07-07T02:03:00.000+02:00

If it rides on nationalism...it's shit.

Period.

The Religious

2005-07-05T13:35:00.000+02:00

Given their addiction to a mystical explanation for human phenomena, and to a metaphysical basis for morality (effectively blinding them to real-life experience as a moral guide), the religious are capable of all forms of horror…and given their psychological need to reaffirm their self-esteem through the literal “truth” of the particular metaphysical belief structure they choose, the religious are in a perfect position to be manipulated into any sort of crime.

Just look around.

Paul Harvey

2005-07-03T10:53:00.000+02:00

This is priceless:

Paul Harvey's Tribute to Slavery, Nukes, Genocide
Hateful rant shows Disney's double standard on speech

7/1/05

Disney/ABC radio personality Paul Harvey, one of the most widely listened to commentators in the United States, presented his listeners on June 23 with an endorsement of genocide and racism that would have been right at home on a white supremacist shortwave broadcast.

Harvey's commentary began by lamenting the decline of American wartime aggression. "We're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies--more moral, more civilized," he said. Drawing a contrast with what he cast as the praiseworthy nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, Harvey lamented that "we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq and kept our best weapons in their silos"--suggesting that America should have used its nuclear arsenal in its invasions of both countries.

Harvey concluded - "We didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.

"And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy."

Harvey's evident approval of slavery, genocide and nuclear and biological warfare would seem to put him at odds with Disney's family-friendly image. The media conglomerate syndicates Harvey to more than 1,000 radio stations, where he reaches an estimated 18 million listeners. Disney recently signed a 10-year, $100 million contract with the 86-year-old Harvey.

In 2004, Disney forbid its Miramax subsidiary to distribute Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, even though Miramax was the principal investor in the film. A Disney executive told the New York Times (5/5/04) that it was declining to distribute the film because, in the paper's words, "Disney caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore's film...could alienate many."

One wonders whether Disney executives are worried about alienating families who oppose slavery, nuclear war and Native American genocide...

-from FAIR: http://www.fair.org/index.php

That last part makes for lovely irony.

I grew up hearing that silly man's voice on the radio. Nice, father-knows-best, homey kind of fascist. As Dmitri says of his terrible father in The Brothers Karamazov: "Why must such men exist??"

2005-06-23T09:05:00.000+02:00

a thing of beauty and a joy forever

idiots

2005-06-23T08:38:00.000+02:00

Federal agents are breaking into establishments in San Francisco that provide marijuana to patients for medical use. People are arrested for using this plant to alleviate pain and suffering.
Unfuckingbelievable.
This kind of Puritan sickness is one of the most disgraceful manifestations of all the human pathologies. A plant grows from the ground. You pick it, dry it and smoke it. It makes many people feel good. Gives pleasure. It need not be processed or changed. Moreover, it lessens the suffering of the ill.
Yet the fucking assholes outlaw it. They send their creeps to bully and arrest people. Lives are destroyed. All in the cause of the squirmy fear, insecurity and nastiness that lurk behind Puritanism.

It's all twisted and evil. Yet millions are convinced that this is normal. That there is something so wrong and dangerous about this plant that it must be outlawed. Poor, ignorant bastards. Fattening themselves with corporate processed cheesewhip crap and mucking up their minds with religious claptrap, marching to the beat of the military drum and flying their ugly (not to be burnt!) flag.

¡Hay que joderse!

2005-06-17T10:12:00.000+02:00

nice smoke

hilarious

2005-06-17T09:28:00.000+02:00

Among the long list of socio-political uglies (such as the sudden hysterical concern with drunk driving) that sprang up like so much fungus during the Reagan years (and used by that administration and its successors to deflect working Americans' attention from the fact that they were being economically screwed), the anti-smoking movement was in many ways the most remarkable. Obviously, it has always been a good idea to educate people of the health hazards, and to do what is possible to raise smokers' awareness of how their practice can annoy others. Yet it seems clear that anti-tobacco mania has always been rooted more in puritanism than in health concerns. While Americans have supported ever stronger anti-smoking laws, they have mostly watched complacently as the same law makers eviscerated other kinds of environmental legislation aimed at industrial activity. It's ok if we poison ourselves through our productive activites, or our transportation needs, but not ok if we do so with tobacco. Why? Well, tobacco is, in the end, a pleasure...a vice. Obviously much worse from the perspective of the prevailing "Protestant ethic".
In any case, the anti-tobacco movement has come a long way, and I've always been amazed that erstwhile industry-friendly politicians seemed, for a change, to stick to their principles while sticking it to the big tobacco companies. Amazing, thought I, that Jesse Helms and other right-wing corporate whores would let the government take so much money from their cronies in one of the country's biggest industries...

...Well, as we saw this week, there was no need to ba amazed. In more obvious political maneuvering, Big Tobacco's penalty was cut from 130 billion dollars to 10 billion. Huh? 120 billion dollars that those folks can keep. Logical. Indeed. Jesse, glad you're still around.

I have to say that although I'm no supporter of the big tobacco companies, I have never felt comfortable with the notion of "blaming" them for those people who smoked their way into serious health problems. Anyone who has ever inhaled tobacco smoke would have to be a complete idiot not to realize that damage was being done to the body. The notion that the tobacco companies fooled people into smoking serves to remove all individual responsibility from the individuals themselves. Problematic. In line with the "always look for a bad guy to blame" syndrome that infects the American soul. People are, for the most part, not innocent morons. They are fully capable moral agents capable of making decisions.

In any case, if those presumed 130 billion (arrived at after five years of legal struggle) were to have been plowed into a fund for public health, that would have been fine. But who are we kidding? The main point here is the utter consistency of class-interest over the public good revealed time and again by those currently in power...

...and they were voted in by those espousing "moral values". It's hilarious.

2005-06-14T09:19:00.000+02:00

2000 year old olive tree in Almeria

overwhelming evidence

2005-06-14T09:06:00.000+02:00

I can't resist quoting a question posed by Steve Weissman last week:

"What if rational thought misses the cosmic plot? What if our prayerful president, his oil-soaked pre-emptive wars, and his amen chorus of religious reactionaries have come together to do the devil's work? What if Satan - and not just the demonic Dick Cheney - now drives the global train wreck?

For many believers, the evidence seems overwhelming."

The world turned upside down? Perhaps. Or is there something implicitly inverse about the Christian message?

arde

2005-06-13T10:36:00.000+02:00

It's old and continual news in the States - how the right uses homofobia (hatred, fear, insecurity and a host of other pathologies) to win elections. No one can doubt the sheer evil political genius of Rove and his minions in placing anti-gay marriage referendums in important states last November (of course, we cannot just put the blame on the Roves of the world...or the Goebbels of the world, for that matter - in the end, those were individual citizens who were spurred on to go out to the polls and vote for inept, corrupt creeps - all out of their squeemish, pathological hatred of how some folks care to love). Here in Spain the issue is still hot. The somewhat progressive PSOE government passed a new law legalizing same-sex marriage some time back, and the current opposition party (Partido Popular), surely taking a cue from some creepy Washington political consultancy, has recently been moving their base with homofobia. They managed to bring tens of thousands into the streets of Madrid last week, all in "defence of the sacred institution of marriage". Makes one sick. All of this, of course, with the active participation of the Catholic church - as always right there on the vanguard of political nastiness. There is no real p0litical logic, of course. The Church has never accepted civil marriages itself, and the new law only applies to State-recognition of same-sex unions. So, one might ask, what in hell are they doing getting involved in criticizing something they already reject for heterosexual couples?
Nothing. I'm sure that none of them could give a flying fuck. Neither in the gilded offices of the Vatican or their affiliates in Spain or elsewhere. Nor do those cynical politicians using this issue to retain or regain power give a goddamn whether two men or two women can have their union legally recognized. They simply know that it's a good way to bring out their sordid base - that part of the electorate that bases its "moral values" on fear, puritanism, squeamishness, hatred...and above all, hypocricy...
Which once again makes me wonder: why must we continue to show respect for these sky-god movements, while they continue to show complete disrespect for those who do not share in their bizarre metaphysical constructs? For chrissakes, it is really annoying.
An oftheard Spanish anarchist refrain that I really like: La unica iglesia que ilumina es la que arde.

Indeed.

arrogance

2005-05-24T16:33:00.000+02:00

Hmmm...so many leaked stories and images of the degradations of war...torture, abuse, inhuman treatment of prisioners...physical and psychological abuse of citizens...a vanquished ex-leader shown in his underwear. Indignities not just for the victims, but, normally, for the perpetrators. One would think that the current U.S. military, and administration, would want to conceal such horrors committed in the name all north American citizens...if only to somehow justify their actions in the name of being the "better", or perhaps more highly "moral" side of the conflict.
But no. These stories and images continue to leak out of the various hell-holes produced by what they call the "war on terror". How is it possible? It is logical to assume that with all their power, technology, and seeming indifference to American Constitutional safeguards, that these people would be able to stop such information from emerging.
Which leads me to believe that it is all quite purposeful.
Purposeful behaviour from people who are not functioning in any classically American-style pragmatic manner, nor ruled by any traditional notions of realpolitique. If it were so, this would provide at least a glimmer of hope, in that the torrent of lies and murderous brutality shown by the U.S. administration would represent nothing more than a greedy oil grab and mega-pork project for the Halliburtons, et. al. That would simply be a classic display of cold-hearted power by mafia types in suits. This has happend before, and it will happen again. In any case, that would call for a more thorough and professional P.R. front. Barbaric practices by U.S. citizens, representing all such citizens, one might think, would needlessly erode the kind of political support needed to maintain this unholy oil/military industry pork soup.

But no. This news and these images continue to emerge. The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that they simply want to scare the shit out of what these crazed fascists believe are "the other"..."the bad guys"...those who don't even value life...
In short, it is a manifestation of the "new crusade" mentality against, for now, the Muslim world.

It would seem that we are not only witnessing a horrid display of greed and evil in the name of "defending" America, with the accompanying creation and exploitation of fear and ignorance, and the resulting attack on the American political system (they call these people "conservatives"!!), but at the same time the perpetrators are quite insane religious fanatics. Not only do they talk this way, but their actions lead to the uncomfortable conclusion that they really believe their own fascist fantasies.

Those who annoy me the most in all this are the spineless yapping chickenhawk "intellectuals" who supported and continue to support carnage and evil in our names. They should know better than to fall into this simplistic "clash of civilizations" formula.

Yet they yap on, in their arrogant way.

Hay que joderse!

2005-05-18T13:51:00.000+02:00

howl

yapping

2005-05-18T13:02:00.000+02:00

I've just read that there are currently 10 million of these blogs...with 30 t0 40 thousand more added each day. A wonderful thing indeed, with all of us being able to share all of our wonderful, insightful thoughts, stimulating and interesting experiences, lovely photos and whatnot with each other. And if we are particularly adept and energetic with our "advertisements for ourselves", we can rest assured that our contributions will be soaked up by hundreds, thousands or even millions of other minds.

At the same time.

All of us, yapping away in cyberspace. Mass self-actualization.

Great stuff. Like millions of barking dogs in the electronic night...

awwooooooooooo!!!

2005-04-26T16:42:00.000+02:00

sky over Beas

Jesus!

2005-04-25T17:32:00.000+02:00

Watched Tim Robbin's amazing "Bob Roberts" last night. It was made back in the early 90's, with the emphasis on the outer limits of social pathologies spawned by Reaganism. At the time is was a frightening but humorous parody...
Not now. I no longer laughed. The film was utterly believable. As they say, reality always trumps fiction, and the depths of grotesque insanity into which U.S. culture/politics is falling have made Robbin's film very troubling to watch.
At about the same time that I was watching "Bob Roberts", tens of millions of "Christians" in the U.S. were watching and listening to a host of christofascist politicians and media figures celebrate "Justice Sunday"...in which so-called "conservatives" lined up to toss stones at the Constitution and the separation of church and state. Lots of foaming at the mouth. More insanity.
How did things get this way? The U.S. has always had a minority current of extreme religious pathology running through its culture...and sometimes into its politics (One nation under God). But the project forged by the Enlightenment-inspired wealthy intellectuals referred to as the "founding fathers" has never been under greater threat of destruction...the christofascists seem like sharks on a feeding frenzy.
Whoever the hell was behind the big-time violence of 9/11 surely knew which button to push. Fear has twisted a large portion of a nation into ugly insanity. I shiver to think what would happen after another such episode.

Meanwhile...an old Nazi-Youth - the head of the Vatican's modern day inquisition, the destroyer of the spring of decency once represented by Liberation Theology, one who has the nerve to equate 60's political movements with potential Nazism - is head of that ridiculous institution.

There's a good word in Spanish for all of this: esperpentico...

2005-04-05T11:49:00.000+02:00

dry mountain mouth

An April Morn

2005-04-05T11:33:00.000+02:00

I recall reading a line just after last November's elections that made me chuckle. Something along the lines of how the elections had transformed the writer into a right winger, i.e., he hated the working class and had ceased to believe in evolution...
Indeed.
Now I read that it's time for the Christofascists to ideologically cleanse the "liberal-biased" (whatever the hell that is) U.S. universities. Any professor accused of "offending the beliefs" of a student (e.g., not giving equal time to creationism) can be sued in court by that student.

Why not just throw the offending "liberals" into concentration camps (they could be set up around the new oil drilling fields in Alaska)...

Jeez.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about what Spain was like last year at this time. The Islamofascists had done another deed for their skygod by blowing up a bunch of commuter trains...blood and guts just before the general elections. The political party in power at the time, the Partido Popular, erroneously sensing that they could loose support (90% of Spaniards were consistently against Spanish participation in the Iraq war), quickly panicked. They blamed the attacks on the Basque separatist group ETA (a situation which, if true, would have served to increase public support for the PP). Evidence quickly accumulated that this was not the work of ETA, but rather of a group of Islamofascists. However, the PP continued to insist, blindly and emphatically, on the other thesis. They managed to continue in this "massive lying and manipulation of the Spanish people" (as Zapatero, the new president would describe it 6 months later) right up until election day...

An amazing thing happened. Millions of disgusted Spanish voters went to the polls (most of whom were left-leaning, and who hadn't voted in years due to disappointment with the "left" parties), and voted the lying bastards out.

For this act of courage and democratic action, the Spanish people were immediately treated to accusations of bowing to terrorism, cowardice, etc. All of this, of course, from foreign columnists, chickenhawks and other opinion mongers...

And I have to laugh today, thinking about how the terrorists have truly affected elections in this world. They have succeeded in transforming the USA into a population ruled by fear. A population (a goodly percentage, anyway) who voted for the most inept, anti-American administration in history out of fear. Cowardly fear. An adminstration that is cynically making fools of their own voting base...

And they say the Spaniards succumbed to terrorism...

Hay que joderse.

2005-04-04T18:55:00.000+02:00

olives

2005-04-04T17:32:00.000+02:00

Impossible to watch the news. Nothing but post-canonization of a supposed saint. Helped "free the world of communism". Another hero akin to Reagan. One feels like screaming bloody murder. Indeed. How many millions or hundreds of millions of souls were caused to suffer for the sanctified opinions of this man? How long will those of us who believe in facing reality honestly and with dignity have to bow before the dream merchants, the salesmen of metaphysical tripe? How long must we watch as those around us choke on the fodder, spitting it in our faces when we question the absurdity and hyprocrisy of it all? How long will it be completely acceptable and politically correct to overtly or covertly condemn the worldview of hundreds of millions by insisting we all shall suffer eternally in some fantasy hell?...this, while non-believers are harshly judged for even mildly questioning the stories and foundations squeezed out of the metaphysical madness that abounds.
Hay que joderse.