EVENT: World Oceans Day Hangout

In honor of World’s Ocean Day, the Online Ocean Symposium will be hosting a series of three special meetings through Google’s Hangout conferencing.  Much in the way that some of the less environmentally concerned (our outright hazardous) corporations have been using advanced technologies like conference calling and video calling to hold closed meetings that advanced their agendas and lines their pockets at the expense of the oceans, we can now freely and easily use the same type of communications tools to combat the damage that has been done and bring awareness to our beautiful oceans.

It seems surprising to think that today, with the prevalence of social media crossing over into all aspects of life, through media, technology, and even helping to spur on revolution, then not enough has been said about the values that these platforms provide, and inherent opportunities within them for even greater social, political, and environmental change.  We here at the Online Ocean Symposium are quite the early adopters, but still even find ourselves in awe of the power of these tools.

With the Worlds Ocean Day coming soon, on June 8^th, we truly have a wonderful opportunity to use these tools and not only help to advance the cause, but strengthen an already growing community of activists across the globe who know are truly empowered in an international coalition of dreamers and earth shakers to accelerate the changes.

In combination with the Google Hangout, we will be running live feeds on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook enabling us  to educate, engage, and interact with supporters everywhere.  Participants in the Hangout include organizations as far geographically from each other as Jenifer Austin Foulkes, the program manager of the Google Ocean’s Program, in Mountain View, California; Richard Vevers from Catlin Seaview Survey and Underwater Earth in Australia; Mission Blue Board Member Sharon Kwok straight from Hong Kong, and of course, our very own Andrew Kornblatt will be moderating.  Each of these organizations is taking a very different tact, yet they are all attempting to achieve the same goal, and by working together, we can all do so much more.  These are just some examples of the people who will be participating, yet it clearly displays the truly global interconnectedness that we now possess, and the power of unity that comes from that.   

In the days before social media, it took 16 years for this day to be recognized by the United Nations after its initial proposal by the Canadian delegation at the RIO Earth Summit of 1992.  In the short 5 years since it’s official recognition, it has been able to garner incredible support from organizations and activists across the world, and by working together with all of the tools at our disposal, we are presented with the opportunity to create a change that won’t merely benefit our grandchildren or our children, but that we can proudly see the initial results of within our lifetimes.  We now have the ability to gather people who all over the globe who sympathize with this cause, and turn them not merely into supporters, but active participants, and create a chorus of voices that cannot be ignored.

11 Steps to Facism

Fascism: A centralized and private control of wealth and information in order to ensure the massive investment and manufacture of arms and military equipment, the suppression of rights and labor movements, the control of public opinion through the use of news media manipulation and state sponsored propaganda. 

1. Invoke a threat

If you have yet to believe that 9/11 was an inside job then dig deeper and do your own homework; American history has several other prime examples to choose from. The gulf of Tonkin incident occurred on August 2nd, 1964 which entered U.S. naval forces full steam ahead into the Vietnam war. But let’s take a few steps back: in the 1930’s public opinion for the U.S. joining WWII was so low that the majority of Americans all but ignored the global conflict as yesterday’s news. Following the attack of Pearl Harbor public opinion for joining the war was so high that enlistment offices were swamped and overwhelmed. Still don’t believe that this could happen? Think back to the weapons of mass destruction fiasco which lead to the war in Iraq. I just want to be clear that I am in no way insinuating that the United States government orchestrated these events, but I do want to demonstrate the shift in public opinion when it comes to such events. It takes more than high gas prices to support a war, it also takes public opinion, and when swaying public opinion to something like war it helps to have an enemy.

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Book Review: No Quarter

A foundational goal of Bay Area Butchers is to provide a platform for writers to show us what it looks and feels like to be alive in the world around them, their life forged in uncontrollable circumstances followed by decades of choices and reactions.   There are many experiences and perspectives that each of us will never know, no matter how adventurous and open we are, and others we hope to never know despite the mistakes we make.  These are the experiences that most captivate us in movies and books, in stories told to exhilarate and scare, to educate and warn.  I’ve always been fascinated by crime stories and criminals, by those characters who choose to break all the rules and societal expectations, to go their own way, damn the risks and consequences, all in pursuit of some flawed, romantic goal.  But at a distance, through the gloss of Hollywood and the imagination of writers, the harsh reality of committing a crime, of being caught and the life lived as a result, is shielded from us; the worst truths hidden, only known by the ignored and forgotton, the imprisoned and dead men walking.   

My limited and distorted perspective of a life lived in prison was shattered after being introduced to the writing of Michael Wayne Hunter. Michael has spent 18 years on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison before his sentence was commuted to Life Without Parole in 2002. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his writing, including PEN America Center Awards for fiction and non-fiction, and The William James award for prose. His past works have been published in a variety of books, magazines and newspapers. More of his current writing can be found here on BAB, as well as on www.minutesbeforesix.com and Life After Death Row. He now resides at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California.  

Michael’s new book, No Quarter (available through iTunes and Amazon), is an eye-opening journey into the day-to-day life of our prisoners and the cast of true to life characters that surround them.   No Quarter is a complex murder mystery, an unconventional love story, and a window into the life of those we disregard as damned and unredeemable.  It’s a story about living within prison: about “greed, fear, power, knowledge, leverage, and most of all — dying”.   Michael has provided us with an opportunity to see this world first hand, how it really looks and feels to live within those high prison walls, how they affect all those that enter, leaving their mark on even the best of us.   In the end, No Quarter lays bare the national tragedy that is the death penalty and death row.  We are confronted with the truth and consequences of a barbaric policy of vengeance carried out with banal indifference.   

After the jump is an excerpt from Chapter One of No Quarter, a taste of Michael Wayne Hunters new novel (which you can purchase through iTunes and Amazon):

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Bad Quotes

I didn’t vote today. I should have but ended up taking a half-day at work to enjoy my neighborhood and walk around. Did anyone vote? Probably not. The only thing on the ballot I cared about was a cigarette tax. I didn’t want to go out of my way to cast a vote on that, and if I have to pay an extra dollar in taxes because I smoke, AND I find out that *MY* vote would have counted… I would go nuts. But that is not going to happen. I hope that when people see the word “TAX”, they will say no. I also know that when people see “TAX THAT DOES NOT IMPACT ME”, they will vote yes. Let people do that they naturally do. All I know is that in a few years, the cigarette cartels will be in charge of bringing illegal cigarettes into our area and I’ll end up avoiding all taxes by buying my smokes from them.

If I were to say…

“I never have been in favor of bringing about the equality of the white and black races.” and/or “whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do…”

… most people wouldn’t like it.

When Mitt Romney tells us that Detroit shouldn’t be bailed out, all we see is “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”. I know there are many reasons to vote for Mitt, but when a majority of the people in Michigan wake up in the morning and say to themselves “I think that the person who wants to eliminate my job and let me deal with it gets my support,” it makes we wonder. 

A stripper is supposed to tell you that you have the largest penis in the world. When she tells you that you’ve got a small dick and no woman would touch you unless you had money in your pocket, you either walk away or pay her enough to tell you that you have the largest penis in the world.

The people of Michigan are at one of the extremes. Either they read Mitt’s article and said “Yeah, we need to restructure things so that Detroit works again”, or they walked in like zombies and, after reading “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”, they still voted for Mitt. Regardless of what happened, no one was asked to explain.

We all need our heroes. I always wanted Obama to be one. He will be when nothing matters.

The quotes above were from Abraham Lincoln. Today, he slays vampires. Back then he fixed all that was wrong with the world and eliminated slavery.

Awesome thing to do for someone who hated black people and …

[But we all need our heroes]

Jack Ruby's Red Slippers

“Well, you won’t see me again. I tell you that a whole new form of Government is going to take over the country, and I know I won’t live to see you another time.”  -Jack Ruby (Warren Commission Interview)

“This man is a Nazi in the worst order.”  -Jack Ruby (Referring to President Lyndon Johnson)

“The old war lords are going to come back. South America is full of these Nazis. They will know that it is only one kind of people that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Nazis and that is who is in power.”  -Jack Ruby (Interview)

“Nazi’s without uniforms…”  -Jack Ruby

Welcome to the yellow brick road my friends, Kansas is gone Toto. We begin our journey at the close of WWII with the tin man, or should I say… the missing Nazi submarines. A last convoy of submarine vessels leaves German harbors with unknown cargo and directions to Antarctica. It is the last and most successful attempt to escape the Allies clutches. One of these submarines was the U530 which emerges empty some four months later in Argentina, though the crew reveals nothing about its whereabouts for the last four months nor it’s payload.

Even to today more than a hundred submarines of the German fleet are missing.

Interrogations of the U530 crew officially reveal nothing, and one year later the surrender of the Nazi submarine U977 seemingly brings the war to a final end. This strange ending, as odd as it seems, becomes the catalyst for the largest military expedition of its time; 13 ships, 1 aircraft carrier, 2 seaplanes, 2 transports, and 4,000 men leave U.S. bases and head towards Antarctica… why?

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The Fourth Reich Part II

You can read part I here.

Opinions are like firecrackers without matches, what is the point if they don’t light?

When any form of a ruling elite in power dictate their will down to their subjects without forethought to common cause and effect and so negligently insulate themselves from the well being and concerns of those people who support them and that form of enslavery - whether it be socio political, economical, idealogical, or even spiritual - that brand of power can always be known in that shape and form from which it hides in and for which it is for that is the spirit of fascism.

The reign of corporations begins when people blindly allow a transfer of power to take place which reduces people to numbers; this is why the nazis tattooed numbers on Jews arms and why everyone carries a credit card with numbers on it. Credit ratings have tagged you like cow polks tag their cattle, how much income to debt ratio are you capable of producing? How much milk is that cow over there going to produce?

Is this the American dream? You better damn well better believe in it.  Freedom comes with a price but most people don’t want to think about what goes on inside the Apple Pie factory, we just want our pie. Everyone has a damn good reason for taking those trips by car or plane, they both run on fuel and where does fuel come from? Capitalism may not be a perfect system but it is certainly the best system; blinded by greed the system becomes just as indiscriminate as nature, the law of the jungle, only the strong survive and that survival is key, that survival is to provide for family and how are you going to protect that system? 

People need to really wake the fuck up and assume a lot of responsibility for their actions or inactions before any expectations of change can be levied on to the surcharges of price and tax, before breaking those beliefs anything less is nihilistic and in the final analysis pointless, opinions with dead ends. Ours is a spiritual war and a struggle for what goes on at night in the big city where egos let loose on the streets in search of feast or famine?

Like a beast awakened to the smell of blood prowling the corridors of power, though it has no face and no name, its power is nothing more nor less than the sum of our combined ignorance.

M is a covert reporter on special assignment

Hostile Indifference

Image by Robert KnappMany of you are coming to know Thomas Bartlett Whitaker through his riveting series “No Mercy For Dogs,” which he began writing for Bay Area Butchers in March of this year (read parts I-IV here, here, here, and here). If you’ve been reading the serial then you know the story is about his life on the run in Mexico after committing the crime for which he now resides on death row.

After his sentencing, at the urging of his father, Thomas started the blog Minutes Before Six to explore and attempt to understand the reasons for his actions.  With the help of friends and family, Thomas discovered that he had a talent for writing and established an audience.  He started to use the forum to share the reality of living out a death sentence.

Here is an early passage from Minutes Before Six on his loss of freedom and adjustment to Death Row:

“It was my day to go to rec last, so I asked who I would be going out with. The guard told me there was an odd number of recs left, so I would be going out alone. I’ve been feeling a little crazy and alone lately, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to go out by myself, but in the end I decided the cold air would do me some good. At around 8 PM I bundled up, and pretty soon they came to handcuff me and take me downstairs. I don’t really remember what I was thinking about when I first got out there. Something typically fragmentary, no doubt. I was walking around the perimeter of the yard, my mind off wandering about wherever it is my mind goes most of the time, when the overhead light burnt out. Suddenly, the sickly sodium vapor yellow was gone, and there was nothing but night sky above me. I couldn’t even see the metal grates or mesh, only the sky. I had not seen a star in almost three years, until that moment. I just stood there, staring upward, my mouth hanging stupidly open. You are never alone in the dark in prison. There is always an overhead light, or a searchlight, or something, always in your face. I wish I could put into words how it felt to stand there, with the cold breeze on my face, and the stars twinkling their light down from the cosmos. I wondered about which stars they were. Did they still burn, or had they imploded and collapsed a million years ago? For some reason, the inexplicable desire to get closer to them overcame me, and I started climbing the bars, my bad arm and all, until I had my face pressed against the grate above me. I tell you this in retrospect, because I do not remember getting myself up there. I don’t know how my cheeks got wet. After a few centuries, or a few minutes, I know not which, the picket officer finally noticed that the light was out. She popped the gates, and came outside, and did a double take when she saw me two stories up. I reluctantly came down, and shuffled over to the bars separating us.  “Whitaker, what the hell were you doing up there?” She looked concerned, because in a year on Death Row, I’ve never caught a case for anything… I didn’t really know what to say. I think something awkward tumbled out about the stars, but it didn’t make much sense, so I just shrugged. She must have noticed the look on my face, though, because she herself looked up, and then back down at me, and if I didn’t know better, I would have sworn there was a moment of understanding…”

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The Butcher Shoppe Cast Episode 9: Bad Arguments

Episode 9: Bad Arguments with Suburbanaut, Momus and new contributor Skeeve.

This week’s ShoppeCast finds our staff recovering from a night of roller derby and booze-fueled shenanigans. Obama’s pro gay-marriage announcement was fresh on our minds, but we found shockingly little to debate on the subject.  It’s a simple matter of equal rights, and we can’t see any reason to deny those rights because of someone’s sexual orientation. In our humble opinion, it’s a stupid argument.   

One stupid argument led to another, and we manage to solve a good portion of the world’s problems in 30 minutes or less. Homophobic politicians, anti-vaccination hoaxes, anti-birth control propaganda, anti-abortion rhetoric and George Lucas all get their turn in this episode.

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The Butcher Shoppe Cast Episode 6: Angel's Story

Lady Justice by Arnold Prieto Jr, on Death Row at the Polunsky Unit in Texas

Episode 6: Angel’s Story with Momus, Suburbanaut, DMZ, and special guest Angel.

We’ve recently been lucky enough to get several new contributors to Bay Area Butchers, including two amazing new writers: Michael Wayne Hunter and Thomas Bartlett Whitaker.  In this week’s podcast, in honor of National Crime Victims’ Rights Week and the great news that Connecticut has abolished the death penalty, we talk with special guest Angel, the woman who made it possible for us to get access to their writing and bring Thomas’ No Mercy For Dogs(part 1, part 2, part 3), and Hunter’s experiences in San Quentin (Death House Intro, Settling into the Q, Acclimation) to our humble pages.   

Angel was kind enough to sit down with us for a few hours and share her story; how she became an advocate for death row inmates, the events that led up to that choice, and her experiences since then.  She has a truly unique perspective, starting with her own experience as a victim of violence, going to trial and dealing with the actual process of justice and the emotions involved, and trying to find a way to discuss the thoughts and ideas that linger after the initial fear is overcome.  Her journey led her to visit death row and eventually become an advocate and voice for people like Michael and Thomas.

We won’t spoil it any further, and Angel tells it far better than we could anyway. So without any further blathering, we’re very proud to present Angel’s Story.

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The Fourth Reich Part I

The rise of one empire is the fall of another, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Our leaders lie to us so why do we follow them?

Of the people for the people by the people, there comes a time and a line that is drawn between protest and resistance no longer can we stand by quiet it is our civic duty.

It is easy to vote a party into regime and then point fingers at it later it is another to challenge and even greater to question and accept your own personal responsibility.

Be the change you want to see in the world, or do you just walk by pretending it is easier to run with the wolves when the going is good then dare risk to justify swimming upstream?

The great promise of a nation is that so long as you don’t threaten it’s freedom then you too will remain free for no harm comes to those who support the ruling elite this too is a lie for it is during this daydream that the sandman takes your rights away.

Let us dare to sing and dance embrace romance and dream of victory for a capitalist state to survive its people must spend money for it is in this thriving commerce that society finds its unity and strength.

Let every man be free so long as he does not harm another but in a world where people must steal to survive how then do we render the vows of our founding fathers when poverty and fascism surrounds us?

Religion teaches us that absolution of personal sin comes from obedience how then do we justify to our maker that our enslavement of innocence was brought on by blind ignorance?

One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

It is not by will alone that we succeed in our passions it is by action.

M is a covert reporter on special assignment

Racism Lives On

Recently, I awoke to find that my gecko green VW Beetle dream car that was parked in my Tallahassee driveway had been spray painted with a racial slur. “Migger!” the black paint spelled out across my car’s right door. Apparently the vandal forgot to remove their finger from the spray button after making the “N,” thus inadvertently transforming the “N” into an “M, ” but the hateful intent was clear.

 

Despite living for almost 20 years in one of the friendliest neighborhoods in Florida’s liberal capital city, I was neither surprised nor angry at the vandalism. No matter where I have lived, encounters with racism have not been unusual in my life. After my family bought a new house when I was five, a white neighbor tried to get other neighbors to sign a petition asking us to move out because we were black. That was in a village that was a 3-hour drive north of New York City.  In Tennessee, after I integrated the office of my first permanent job, a coworker warned me that the computer technologist had been passing out KKK literature. In Virginia, when I held a yard sale shortly after my first son was born, a young white boy looked at my baby and commented, “What a cute little nigger.”

 

Probably most African Americans have had similar experiences. For instance, one of my black friends who, while house hunting after being offered a journalism job in Seattle, was stopped by a white policeman and asked whether he was looking for “pussy or drugs.”

 

I don’t get angry with people who use racial epithets nor do I become enraged at blatant racists. When Klansmen used to hold a Martin Luther King rally in front of Florida’s capitol, I went to see them and felt sorry for them. As Toni Morrison eloquently said about blatant racists, “If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, than you have a serious problem.” So, I pity those who try to heal their shattered souls by trying to hurt others.

 

The people who hurt and anger me are the liberal and progressive white people, who consider themselves to be racism free, yet help perpetuate racism by their own isolation, denial, and passivity.

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