Rant From The Pig Pen

How the fuck can anyone think that what our country needs is more Republican leadership?  Who’s whispering in our ears, or blaring, with aggressive patriotic graphics, throughout our home and work, proven falsehoods, and malevolent innuendo.  Karl Rat Fucking Rove that’s who.  Go check out Crossroads GPS and what they’ve been up to here and here (and this is how you respond); repeatedly spreading openly false and debunked claims all over the country.  This is just par for the course for the Rat Fuck King, and should be expected.  We’ve heard it for decades now: the dirty, violent, wealth-distributing, lazy, Democrat supporting commie hippies are protesting against allowing baby births, blue collar jobs, guns, and the right to never think about gay anal sex (again).    

Why the hell does anyone still fall for this; it’s not like Rove is the first, nor the last, grifter peddling this bullshit.  What fucking world are you living in where you think the Obama administration has been worse with the economy than what the last thirty years of mostly Republican economic policies have wrought.  The United States economy took the biggest hit in the history of the country outside the Great Depression THREE fucking years ago.  I know in our fast-paced, technology driven culture that’s an eternity, but not in recovery-from-a-major-economic-crash time.  It took over a decade to recover from the Great Depression, with a major assist from war manufacturing (aka government stimulus).   We all would love for our economy to get better faster, but these things take time.  That’s why it’s kind important to not get into this situation in the first fucking place.  

Remember our last President, George W. Bush?  Who was in his administration peddling the same lies and bullshit; Karl Rat Fucking Rove that’s who.  And he’s just one malignant bug in a swarm funded by a small group if super-rich skin suits.  The same group of billionaires that fund Crossroads GPS, drove us off the cliff three years ago with a decade of all out class warfare from the top, waving flags and cheering ignorance all the way down to the rocky ground where they rode our broken and bloody corpses to safety.  These are the same group of greedy sociopaths with the primary objective of making Obama a failure, the country be damned: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”  Here we are, slowly recovering from the second worst economic crash is the history of the country, created by rich Republicans, who then made it their mission to block any and all attempts by the government to aid the recovery, and there are people in this country, real living breathing human beings, who think the solution is more fucking Republican policy?   

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What A Week: My Stimulus Package

Fall is here, It’s summer in San Francisco, and The Second Great Depression is upon us.

A lot has been going on the last week or two.  It came out that the FBI keeps you on terrorist watchlists even if you’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing.  Not sure what is worse here, that there are innocent people on the list or that there are people the FBI thinks are terrorists that “are not the subject of any active investigation (!!!)”  In New York, the police (who can also shoot down planes!) are beating up peaceful protesters and the mainstream news is ignoring it.  Israel is building 1,200 more homes in the West Bank and is derailing any chance of even starting a peace process.  Attacks in Afghanistan are increasing.  At a recent debate Republicans Presidential candidates didn’t admonish the crowd for booing a soldier on national TV and neither did the moderators.  Candidate Rick Santorum said that he would shove all of the gays back into the closet by re-instating Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, to which he received thunderous applause.  I’m guessing that there are a lot of closeted gays in the audience who were missing all the newly out gay servicemen. 

Insurance premiums are going up by 10% this year.  The health care reform package is going to the Supreme Court and could be ruled unconstitutional by the current conservative majority.  Remember that the US is barred by law to negotiate down prescription drug rates.  The drug firms would have prevented this bill from passing if a provision had been included to allow the government to negotiate prices.  The US faces another potential government shutdown in November by a conservative Congress looking for any way to shrink the government in order to pander to their ultra-conservative, anti-government, Christian base.  Why would you want to curtail the biggest spender, the US Government, during a recession?  Morons.  The unemployment rate has more than doubled from 4.5% to 9.1% since September 2006 (Blame Bush-43, The Supreme court for putting him in when not elected, and Al Gore for not suing to get him out).  The US (never mind European) economy is in the toilet and if it doesn’t turn around we’ll have either Mitt Romney (Jesus:  The Mormons are from Mars Dad, we’ve had it checked out) or Pastor Rick Perry as President (Christ is alive?  What millennium does he think it is?!?!).

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How did I get here?

I didn’t pay attention to politics when I was young.  I knew of Clinton’s penis: where it had been and what it had left behind.  My Uncle informed me of Bill’s drug running days and how he had murdered people.  I knew of Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp.  I’d heard about militias and Timothy McVeigh, and how Marilyn Manson inspired mass murder at Columbine.  Instead of spending my time staying politically aware, I drank and inhaled and fucked in and around brief periods of college attendance.  I had better things to do than figure out the intricacies of politics, particularly when it centered on the President’s package.  I was far more concerned with avoiding sobriety and getting my package some female attention, than closely following the governing of my country.  That all changed on September 11th, 2001. 

By the fall of 2001, I’d met my future wife, graduated, and taken a job in California.  Life seemed good, I had settled into my job, and we were enjoying life.  I finally had my shit somewhat together.  A few months later, my wife woke me up and told me we were being attacked, that someone had flown a plane into the World Trade Center.   After twenty minutes of snooze, curious, I morning walked to the television. I watched as the second tower fell; it was awful and surreal.  The day that followed was a blur, at work some people attempted to stay busy, but most of us coalesced around the lunch room television trying to make sense of it.  Nobody appeared to understand why this had happened nor what it would mean.  

I was frustrated with my inability to comprehend the dynamics behind such an attack, or even have some basic understanding of our history in the region.  It was a harsh and much needed wake up call.  In the days and weeks that followed, I began reading more and more news and politics online.  I started with the usual sources:  CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, moved on to foreign papers and political blogs.  I followed link upon link for whole days and weeks at a time.  I watched cable news shows, Sunday talk shows, the Nightly news, both national and local.  I learned to never trust the television.  I watched as we failed to get Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, already looking ahead to Iraq.  Millions of people around the world protested against a war that hadn’t happened yet.   I had learned enough to know this war was a mistake, based on lies and manipulations, a mistake we would all pay for one way or another.  I ranted and raved to my wife, my Mother, my coworkers, anyone who would listen, and many who wouldn’t.  The Iraq invasion began on my twenty-eighth birthday.  I watched on television as the bombs fell; I heard cheers through my neighbor’s windows.  I felt empathy for all involved in the death and destruction raining down while meekly celebrating living another year.    

Today we’re slowly leaving Iraq, nearly eight years since the invasion began.  There are more troops in Afghanistan then at any time during that war, a war that is now the longest war in the history of the United States, and we still haven’t caught Osama bin Laden.  Domestic politics dominates the news; the details are as ugly and messy as the lead up to war.   America has as different a president as our system will allow and on my thirty-sixth birthday he ordered Tomahawk missiles rained down on Libya.  Eight years later and still more gifts of death and destruction in the name of freedom, human rights, and empire.  For me, these tragedies and wars are a wake-up call to pay attention, to put some real effort into figuring out what is really going on, not blindly accepting what my parents, friends, teachers, political representatives, or newscasters have told me is true or real.  I want to share what I’ve learned, and am still learning, with anyone who will listen.  I want to point out the bad arguments, the lies, and the manipulations, the bullshit.  I want to break through preconceived notions and challenge assumptions.  I want to make up for my previous apathy and ignorance and wake up as many people as I can.  Please pay attention and keep me honest.  

After The Fall of Rand

Did they roll up all the sidewalks?
Asked the child at my feet.
Did they burn down all the buildings,
When they tore up all the streets?
No, my son, it was not as fast
As a matchbook shines its light.
It happened over some time
Not throughout a single night.

First they locked away the junkies
Then the pushers, pimps, and queers.
They made the good men step aside
By preying on their fears.
They silenced all the speakers
That used to keep the beat,
Then they banned the beverages
That swept us off our feet.

First it was the men in blue
Who lead it with their fierce attack.
They locked up all the brown skinned men
Then the yellows, reds, and blacks.
After that the walls were built
To protect us from the others.
Not to only keep them out,
But to keep us like our brothers.

Soon they turned upon themselves
But so few were left to fight.
They said it wasn’t just our duty
But it was our God-given right.
Men were killed for being fat
Or having eyes too green.
Some were killed for being short
Some just for being seen.

They tore and raged and burned and hate
‘Til none were left to continue.
And those of us who had survived
Knew there was just one thing true:
If our silence had been speech
We would not walk empty streets
And listen only to the leaves
That crumble dead beneath our feet.

Remember Christina Taylor Green

Christina Taylor Green was only nine years old the day she was killed in a random attack.  Jared Lee Loughner awaits trial for her death, the deaths of five others, and the wounding of another fourteen bystanders, including his stated target, United States Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

The bleeding-heart liberals declare that this is proof that we need to ban guns in this country to prevent exactly this type of event.  The radical right-wingers declare that this is proof that we need to arm all citizens of the nation to prevent exactly this type of event.  The evangelicals declare that this is what happens in a society that has abandoned God.  The pessimists declare that this is why mankind will never survive itself.

Not only are none of these views helpful; none of them are correct, and all of them are dangerous 

The hyper-reactionism of many is the type of misguided response that has led to the riots in the aftermath of the Rodney King and Oscar Grant trials, the Salem Witch Trials, the violent radical fundamentalists of many religions, and the rise of fascism.  Regardless of the fear, frustration, or anger felt, it is extremely dangerous to simply react, without clear thought, to an event, real or perceived, and use that as a basis for world changing policies or beliefs.

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Remember Oscar Grant

On December 31^st, 2008, Oscar Grant left his grandmother’s birthday party to welcome in 2009 with his friends.  He would be dead by morning.  I had been at the New Year’s Eve George Clinton P-Funk show in San Francisco and took BART home.  As I dozed off on the long BART ride home I never suspected that someone sworn to protect us could kill me or one of my loved ones.

If we had taken the BART train going to the East Bay we could easily have been the victims of overzealous BART police at the Fruitvale station that night.  Police officers in the bay area, in my experience, beat up and Taser everyone, then sort it out later.  The police dispatcher called to the arriving officers, “No weapons.”  The BART train operator told Anthony Pirone, Johannes Mehserle’s mentor and the first BART officer on the scene, that this was the end of a “typical New Year’s Eve” scuffle.  The cops didn’t even break up a fight.  It was over when they got there.

I started the Remember Oscar Grant page because I am scared for our society.  I am scared of the implications when there are limited or no repercussions for this and similar killings by police officers.  I am scared for our society if police officers no longer have to check if they are holding a gun or a Taser before pulling the trigger.

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Common Wealth and Health in 2012

In this world of televised wars and marriage debates and failed economic policies we find ourselves as Americans in a state of political uncertainty not seen since the Civil War. Our increasingly dissatisfied population expects change to happen faster and faster with each passing day and we are increasingly saturated with 24 hour news broadcasts and high speed internet connections. Our attention spans are decreasing as the world finds itself a smaller and smaller place through the advances in mass communication and high speed travel. It’s true that Asia was once very far away, and seemed exotic, just as we had distanced ourselves from Europe and all of its socio-political turmoil and evolving cultures. This is no longer the case, and it is clear that we must embrace this new world view, and find it in ourselves to rejoin the world, not as the leaders we have perceived ourselves to be for the last century, but as participants in something greater than a single nation can be. It is time for us to embrace the common wealth and health of the world.

In 1776 our nation declared itself to be independent of the British Monarchy for reasons of taxation, representation, and equality. Many lives were lost in a hard fought war, which the British eventually ceded. A new nation was founded on the ideas of philosophy and democracy. Though infantile in its early decades, the economic and social policies of this country helped it to become, in a mere 200 years, the most prosperous and successful nation in the world. Unfortunately, this status was not meant to last.

We find ourselves now in a questionable state of flux. Nations such as China and India are learning to use their vast resources and the modern international economy to increase their wealth and power at an incredible rate. Nations such as Japan and Germany are shifting their societies and industries to maintain their national statuses. More and more countries across the globe are entering into alliances and associations that are not based on military might, as they have throughout humanities history, but are based solely on industry and economy. The dollar is now stronger than the sword. It is time for us, as Americans to do the same, and embrace this new world order.

We can no longer attempt to enter ourselves into partnerships and alliances as the majority player, we must consider ourselves at best an equal participant. Though we have held that ability for many decades, we will find ourselves as beggars on the world stage without a change in attitude and self awareness. It is time for us to undo the boldest, bravest, and ultimately flawed actions of our founding fathers. It is time for us to rejoin something greater than us.

Though our revolution in the late 18th century was truly one of the defining moments of the modern world, and has led to many things which have truly improved the world, from inspiring other populations to greater freedom, to developing industries and infrastructures which have markedly improved the lives of all who are touched by them, it has also proven to be a short term gain. It is time, my friends and neighbors, for us to rejoin the Commonwealth of Nations.

The Commonwealth, as it stands now, is a loose alliance of nations across the globe, many are former colonies, and all are completely independent of each other. It is time for us to wield the last shred of might and global influence we have to convince these nations that the success we have shown as a collection of united states is a success that can be shared as a collection of united nation-states. We would be able to use the far reaching powers and resources that each of these nations possesses and unite them into a singular cause and entity where the whole of the sum is far greater than its parts.

Though our economy is greatly troubled at this time, it is still the greatest in the world, and this is a resource we could use to develop the industry and infrastructure of those less developed nations, by best utilizing the natural resources inside their borders that have been hereunto largely untapped. We also possess the most well trained, well financed, and well equipped military in the world, something that could be shared with our new brother states. The additional manpower that other nations offer would further boost our military, while simultaneously allowing some of the more unstable members to create a greater legal stability, and raise the standard of living for many of the members. These are merely two of the abilities that we bring to the table as Americans, and there are many others, such as our advanced educational and scientific research institutions, but we are not the only potential members to offer something to the greater good.

England and Canada have been running a socialist system for many years, which has allowed them to provide universal health care and employment across their nations. These already established systems could be expanded across the Commonwealth and further improve the standard of living for all citizens. India has the fastest growing technology industry and a population which could reach such greater potential when offered the greater education and resources that this new unification would offer. Once again, my friends and neighbors, this is only the most basic taste of the potential this plan offers.

As you sit at home watching the highlights from the days sports games, and wondering why our politicians seem so inept; as you sit at work and wonder why our crime rates seem to be escalating and wondering where all of the hope and change has gone that we were all promised so many times before; as you sit in traffic fretting your mortgage payments and are bombarded by advertisements and indictments of fringe groups, realize that there is a better option out there, there is a better way. Universal health care, zero unemployment, stable interest rates, reduced crime, and a greater standard of living for our children and our children’s children in a more successful and stable world is all right there in front of us. Once we, as Americans, were the New World. Now it is time for us, as Americans to embrace the New World Order!

Vote for the Common Wealth and Health Party in 2012!

The Politics of Fear

I normally refrain from posting things like this, and I am not advocating that the current health care and insurance reform bill is perfect and I support it 100%. However, the lies and manipulations that are causing so much grief and fear among the misinformed is unconscionable and I feel it’s important that tactics like these be strongly fought no matter who is perpetrating them.

I ran across this column on the health care debate that I feel addresses many of the latest falsehoods. There is so much politically motivated lies and distortions flying around on TV and the internet, with respect to health care and insurance reform, that I think it’s important that some of this be called out for the blatant lies they are.

I hope that the column above helps correct some misinformation you may have heard lately or encourages you to find out what the proposed legislation actually says. Please take the time to read the actual text of the latest bill that came out of the house: H.R 3200. (Note that it takes a few minutes to load.)

In particular, the section dealing with the Advanced Care Planning Consultation (aka “Death Panels”) is Sec. 1233.

Please take the time to clear up any misconceptions you may have with this issue and try to correct people when they make blatantly false claims that have been created to instill fear and mistrust for purely political reasons.

Between Ismene and Antigone: Comments on the Politics of Grief and Dissent in Iran

I have been keeping up with the Iranian elections religiously, and, like many others have also been keeping up with the story on Neda Soltani—the Iranian woman whose death was captured on cell phone video and posted to youtube. Given the gruesome manner of her death, many have taken to adopting her face as a symbol of a potentially fledgling Iranian movement for ‘change’. However, I believe it’s the events that have followed in the wake of her death that have provided the most damning levers against tyranny and corruption. 

There are several elements in the way Iranian officials have handled this situation that strike me as poignantly disturbing. Her fiancé, Caspian Makhan, has gone on record in describing the difficulty they faced in recovering her body from officials. The government resolutely denied the family the right to a funeral, forcing them to cancel a memorial at a mosque and remove a mourning banner they’d hung. They had to content themselves with her being hastily buried in a plot of ground eerily surrounded by other freshly dug plots. Lastly, her family—whether forcefully evicted or fleeing for their safety—have left the flat they once inhabited, sans explanation. Specifics are hard to come by as neighbors and the surviving Soltani’s are understandably reluctant to grant interviews or divulge much information.

The whole situation bothers me. Preeminent amongst these reasons is the fact that Neda Soltani was murdered and no investigations into her murder appear to be under way. But this aside, I find the government’s refusal to allow her family to hold any sort of funeral services to be unacceptable. It’s a violation of a very human right. You can’t ban people from grieving and honoring the dead without expecting a repercussion.

People posit all sorts of things as being the defining factor in what separates us from the animals, whether its our ability to reason, create art, or wage war.I'm generally loath to play this game, but for kicks I'm going to single out the human proclivity for ceremony as that which defines us. At all stages of human life it exists and whole institutions and industries are designed around our apparent need for it.

Death rituals are probably as old as human civilization itself and they serves a multitude of purposes. Sprung wailing from the ways in which we cope with death--both logistically and metaphysically--is the ceremony of mourning. Funeral rites could arguably be called the colostrum of grief because they're intended to enable the process of healing. Furthermore, funerals are an amazingly humbling and utterly humanizing rite—how we treat and dispose of the dead irrespective of who they were in life says a lot about us, as individuals and a culture.

It is in the denial of a private memorial service and the forced privation of public grieving for Neda Soltani that I think will drive politically ambivalent Iranians into action, even if this mobilization proves situational and ephemeral.

Situational activism seems to involve people who for one reason or another choose to agitate on behalf of a cause even though they normally aren’t politically active. I’d argue that most people who are situationally activist are often normally content to let others do the fighting and legislating. They seem to demand only the right to live and often accept (begrudgingly or not) whatever restrictions or freedoms that other people’s activism might have wrought. 

Perhaps the Soltani’s themselves fall into this category, because by all accounts the late Soltani was not very politically active, nor supportive of one leader over the other. Her presence at the protest stemmed from her discomfiture at blatant electoral rigging; she was attempting to make known her disapproval of a government that had been flagrant in its violations of the social contract. Her fiancé has attributed her death to one of being in the wrong place at the wrong time—so she's hardly a martyr type. From what little I've managed to glean about her, she strikes me as the sort of person that seems to comprise the citizenry in most modern nations. She represents the bread and butter, so to speak, and citizens like Neda Soltani are why nation-states seem to thrive in the first place. Why then would any government adopt such an unjust policy against the people it relies upon to function?

In pondering this, I’m reminded of the Sophoclean play, “Antigone.” The story involves a civil war that results in the death of two brothers (Eteocles and Polynices) fighting on opposite sides of each other. Their uncle, Creon—admittedly a little drunk with power over his victory in war—is averse to Polynices for fighting against him. He declares a formal edict announcing that Eteocles, who fought on his side, shall be honored with burial while Polynices is left to rot.

The parallels (and perhaps the promise) I find between the present Iranian situation and this fictional Greek one, lies in the verbal dialogue between two sisters—the pragmatic Ismene and the eponymous and fervent Antigone (siblings to the deceased brothers). Antigone continually violates Creon’s edict--whose violation carries a death sentence--by burying her brother in secret only to have Creon exhume him. Defiant to the end, she’s caught and declares to Creon that his state bestowed authority holds no sway over her duty to honor her brother. With that she’s sentenced to die. 

Ismene, on the other hand, while sympathetic to Antigone and conscious of her duty to Polynices, cannot bring herself to act against the state. It is only when Antigone is sentenced to death that Ismene—unable to withstand the loss of her only remaining sibling—attempts to falsely implicate herself to Creon. Antigone, in some of the coldest lines uttered in Greek tragedy thwarts Ismene by saying: “You shall not die with me. You shall not claim that which you would not touch. One death is enough.”(141) Antigone later commits suicide, as does her fiancé and Creon's son, Haemon. Ismene, presumably survives but the reader isn’t terribly privy to her fate.

Perhaps I’m holding out for the idea that the Iranians shall find a place somewhere in between these two radically different sisters—fanaticism and pragmatism. In more than one article and op-ed, people continually point to Gandhi’s methods as being perfectly suited to any emergent change in Iran. Civil disobedience, of course, often elicits a violent response from the state, and it requires time for it to take hold. It’s a hard thing to do  and even harder to keep doing. But, I think that if one of the catalysts in this situation is the denial of funeral rites, then the best methods in response may be one of non-violent disobedience. Perhaps it shan’t be the Soltani’s that decide to disobey the edicts of their Supreme leader or refuse to bend to the bullying of the Basiji. Perhaps it will be another family or group that definitively decides that come what may, they will not be kept from mourning and honoring the loss of a loved one as they see fit.

References

1. In Iran, Gandhism Comes of Age, by Steven Waldham

2. Neda Soltan's family 'forced out of home' by Iranian authorities

3. Sophocles. The Theban Plays: Antigone

Liberal Businesses

I am tired of seeing things like this in the parking lot at work or on the road. Close minded people running close minded businesses. We should come up with a logo and a saying like the Better Business Bureau's, "Start With Trust." Not bad. How about Open Minded Business, "Ethical, Liberal and Fair?"

Just a thought.