RANDOM JACK

Rotten Apple: A Symbol of Labor Exploitation

2012-02-16T15:10:00.000-08:00

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

ROTTEN APPLE:
A SYMBOL OF LABOR EXPLOITATION

By Jack Random

In 1984 I bought one of the first Apple Macintosh computers to roll off the line in Cupertino, California. At 132 K ROM (hardly enough to power a toaster by today’s standards), the Mac came loaded with a serviceable writing program (Mac Write) and an ingenious graphics program (Mac Paint) and the age of personal computing was born in earnest.

In those days Apple was a fiercely independent alternative to IBM, the corporate beast that monopolized the computer industry. Apple was a symbol of American ingenuity and innovation. Apple users were loyal to the company and we believed that Apple was loyal to us. We remained loyal even through substandard products because we believe that Apple had a social consciousness.

I don’t know when Apple changed. It doesn’t really matter. But when Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union address, trumpeting the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as a job creator, I knew something was rotten to the core. Daniels was right about Apple job creation. The trouble is some 95% of those jobs were created in China under deplorable working conditions.

In America the very same politicians whose policies wreaked havoc on the global economy spend most of their time attempting to exploit the devastation by attacking what remains of the rights of labor. Too often on the so-called liberal establishment falls silent on the right to organize and the right to collective bargaining (an alternative to a general strike).

In Europe the same voices that claim to represent the left are planting their staffs with the anti-labor forces of austerity.

The recent New York Times article exposing Apple’s exploitation of Chinese labor (“How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, January 21, 2012) reads more like a rationalization if not an outright defense. On international labor rights the Times is as bankrupt as the Greek treasury. An unashamed proponent of Clintonian Free Trade, the Times argued with an unmistakable tone of admiration that Chinese workers at substandard wages (workers at the leading Apple manufacturer, Foxconn Technology, recently received two wage increases from an equivalent of $135 per month to roughly $300 per month) were so motivated that they could be roused to work at a moment’s notice. They frequently work 24 or 36-hour shifts at tedious jobs with little complaint (except for the occasional riot or threatened mass suicide). The story noted that there were plenty more sweatshops making complementary products just down the road.

The Times glossed over the rumored suicide rate and the fact that the company running the largest sweatshop on the planet had to install nets outside its walls to prevent workers from jumping to their deaths.

The Times’ Nicholas Kristof and his fellow compassionate compliciters will tell you that the workers are better off as exploited labor than they otherwise would be. They could be back on the farm tending rice fields at a meager existence or worse; they might be on the streets of protest in open rebellion.

There is little to distinguish the defense of Apple and labor exploitation from the antebellum defense of slavery. The advocates of slavery also argued with characteristic audacity that the slaves were better off than they would have been on their own accord. They had roofs over their heads, clothing, medical care and meals on the table. They were slaves, subject to beatings, inhuman treatment and whatever torture can be imagined, but at least they had food to eat. Their white masters could rape the women at will and the men could do nothing about it but at least their basic needs were fulfilled. If not for a few rabble rousers, malcontents and radical idealists, the slaves would have been happy to live out their lives, generation after generation, in contented servitude.

We recognize now that such arguments are an affront to human decency but in the land of antebellum slave plantations they were tolerated if not embraced.

It is by no means admirable that workers can be roused from sleep at any time of the day or night to work another twelve-hour shift. It is not laudable that workers can be forced to work in unsafe environments with toxic chemicals and hazardous waste. It is not acceptable that children of twelve are subjected to these conditions. When workers riot and threaten mass suicide it is not a sign of relative wellbeing.

I know that Apple is not alone. Foxconn has contracts with Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Motorola, Nokia, Toshiba, Samsung, Amazon, Nintendo and IBM.

Apple has responded predictably to the negative publicity of the Times report and the potent monologue of Mike Daisey now playing at the Public Theater in New York (“The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”). It has hired an “independent” watchdog to monitor and report on labor abuse in China and elsewhere. Unfortunately, that organization receives its funding from the industry.

Apple perceives labor abuse as a public relations problem because Apple does not care about workers in China or anywhere else. Apple cares about the bottom line and Apple is afraid that this wave of negative publicity will forever tarnish its image and affect its profit ratio.

I know the futility of calling for a boycott. We are addicted to our intelligent devices and there are no viable alternatives. We cannot for a moment believe that the sweatshops in Indonesia or anywhere else where the economy thrives on cheap labor are any better than those in China.

I am calling for a different response and one that would have an impact on the bottom line. We do not need the latest gadget. We do not need the immediate upgrade to the latest technological innovation. We can wait.

That is what I am suggesting that every conscientious consumer should do. Delay that next purchase. Delay it as long as possible. Make that purchase only when it is necessary.

If enough people take this approach, Apple and all the others will notice. They will make changes. They may not move their plants back home immediately but in time, who knows?

If they were to move back home, you can bet that those 750,000 Chinese jobs would translate to 500,000 robotic devices and a handful of managers and maintenance crews.

So be it. If they continue to operate as they are, they need to know that the fight for labor rights does not end at our shores.

Jazz.

[This article posted by Counterpunch, February 16, 2012.]

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, GLOBAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

The Coming Explosion & Omission in Osawatomie

2011-12-19T16:16:00.000-08:00

Regarding Omission in Osawatomie (a Jazzman Chronicle reprinted below):

I completely agree with your thesis. There was a great poet by the name of Langston Hughes with whom Barack Obama would be well served to heed in his neglect of the rhetoric he used to obtain the office of the POTUS. In the final stanza of the poem, it reflects the inevitable outcome of the body politic. There will be an uprising at some point; an explosion!

Wakiza L. McQueen

HARLEM by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
or fester like a sore—
and then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

December 14, 2011
A Line Obama Will Not Cross
Omission in Osawatomie
by JACK RANDOM

Like the sirens to Odysseus, President Obama’s address at Osawatomie, Kansas, was pleasing to the progressive ear but if you allow its seductive tone to capture you, it could well prove fatal to the cause.

We have heard this song before. It takes us back to the soaring oratory that uplifted the masses and propelled a one-term senator to the presidency. Then as now, the president correctly and brilliantly deconstructs the problem: The middle class is under siege, hemorrhaging skilled and unskilled jobs to cheap labor markets overseas, resulting in depressed wages and declining benefits, depleted retirement funds, union busting and unregulated industries.

But, then as now, his solutions fail to approach the heart of the matter. Proclaiming a new world economy based on innovation, he advocates government funding for research and education, science and engineering, progressive taxation, regulation, consumer protection and a commitment to building and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure.

These are all worthy ideas that the president strings together with a rising intonation in order to avoid the obvious, central and core solution. Consequently, he builds to a dull crescendo, sounding a sour chord and all too familiar refrain: Technology and innovation will save us.

The president prides himself on his knowledge of history, so much so that he summoned the memory of Theodore Roosevelt in this address. Unfortunately, history does not uphold his case. Technology and innovation have never sustained the middle class. They have created fortunes and whole industries but how it affects the working people depends entirely on where the industries are located and how the workers are paid.

Take a good look at the major innovations of the Free Trade era: The personal computer, the laptop and the smart phone are all made in China and serviced in India. Solar technology created advanced solar collectors and panels, creating a thriving industry in China. Hybrid vehicles may be assembled in America but by-and-large they are constructed in foreign nations where the cost of labor trumps all other concerns. Even our bridges are made in China.

Within the parameters of a global Free Trade economy, there is no innovation that can revive American industry. The idea that innovation and education are going to create jobs for 300 million Americans is a pipe dream, a fantasy and, in this case, an excuse not to address the heart of the matter.

The obvious answer and the one that perpetually evades the president and the majority of his party is Fair Trade. American workers can compete and win on a fair playing field but no one can compete with dirt-cheap labor. The masterminds behind the new global economy have built corporate profits by exploiting the cheapest possible labor overseas and simultaneously undermining labor in our own country.

What is Fair Trade?

It is built on the conviction that all nations that engage our nation in trade should uphold the rights of labor, including the right to organize, and pay their workers living wages.

How would Fair Trade be implemented?

The most direct route would be to reserve preferred trade status to nations that protect the rights of labor, provide basic health and retirement benefits, and pay living wages to their workforce. All other nations would be subject to a tariff proportionate to the cost of compliance.

The message to China, India and all other nations that now benefit from the imbalance of trade would be clear: Pay your workers at home or pay to protect our workers at the border.

Human rights and the critical issue of carbon emissions also come into the equation but if the goal is rebuilding American industry, then the heart of the matter is labor.

Why is Fair Trade off the table?

There was a time when simply raising the cry of “Protectionism” could defeat any such proposal but after decades of job exportation, Americans are losing their fear of words. Protecting our workers in the current environment is a moral imperative.

Accordingly, Fair Trade is alive and well in the United States Congress. Even Republicans in the House and Senate are afraid to go on record in opposition. The Trade Reform Accountability Development and Employment Act proposed by Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Representative Michael Michaud of Maine would fundamentally reshape America’s trade policy, bringing labor to the forefront.

Unfortunately, the silence of the White House enables congressional leadership to keep the measure from coming to the floor for a vote. President Obama presses forward on Free Trade deals with Korea, Columbia and Panama, ensuring the exportation of jobs to even more nations.

Even progressive economists are reluctant to address trade policy, preferring to attack trade imbalance through so-called currency manipulation. The idea is if our trading partners increased the value of their currency it would be more expensive to buy their goods and less expensive for them to buy ours. If the revaluation were large enough and sustained, it would certainly have an effect.

The problem with the currency approach is that it allows the tenets of Free Trade to stand. It does not end the anti-labor measures enforced by austerity regimes under the dictates of the International Monetary Fund. That is why even the prototypical corporate candidate, Republican Mitt Romney, feels free to advocate punitive actions against China based on the charge of currency manipulation. It leaves workers out on the lurch and the rights of labor out of the picture. Moreover, all nations manipulate currency. That is the primary function of the Federal Reserve.

Of course, if we were to insist that other nations respect the rights of labor we would have to do a better job of protecting our own workers. We could no longer allow individual states to effectively crush unions with so-called Right to Work laws. We could no longer allow legislative attacks on collective bargaining without paying a price.

It is as if the entire liberal establishment, from the politicians to the intellectuals to the media, signed on to Bill Clinton’s Free Trade mandate back in the eighties and have adhered to that agreement ever since.

It was a deal with the devil, a betrayal of every working man and woman not only in America but throughout the world, and it demands to be revisited now.

In 2008 candidate Barack Obama said, “I voted against CAFTA, never supported NAFTA, and will not support NAFTA–style trade agreements in the future. While NAFTA gave broad rights to investors, it paid only lip service to the rights of labor and the importance of environmental protection.”

Where is that candidate now? He disappeared upon taking the oath of office.

In retrospect, it seems amply clear that candidate Obama made a deal with Wall Street, his leading campaign contributors, before he embarked on his road to the White House. Fair Trade was off limits. It was the one territory he could not visit. It was the one line he could not cross.

An original sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act (an affirmation of the right to organize and establish a union by majority vote) had President Obama remembered his labor roots in his address at Osawatomie, had he raised the banner of Fair Trade to initiate his campaign for a second term, then that address might have stood alongside Teddy Roosevelt’s New Nationalism or Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal inaugural address.

As it stands, it is the perfect symbol of his presidency to date: A promise unfulfilled.

If we were to initiate the age of Fair Trade it would fundamentally change the debate and ultimately alter the structure of the global economy. The world would face a choice. The European people would insist that their governments follow our lead. China and India would fight back but they are as dependent on us as we are on them. A bargain would be struck and a transition would be negotiated.

America would win back her industries and the middle class would re-emerge at the heart of the global economy.

It will happen in any case. It is inevitable. To continue on the path we are on will lead only to massive civil unrest and the result will be the same. By initiating Fair Trade now we could avoid much of that inevitable pain and disruption.

If only we had a leader with the courage to break his pact with Wall Street in order to keep his promise to the American people.

[Article posted by Pacific Free Press, CounterPunch and Dissident Voice.]

Jack Random is the author of Jazzman Chronicles (Crow Dog Press) and Ghost Dance Insurrection (Dry Bones Press.)

Occupy Wall Street Bloomington

2011-10-31T17:53:00.000-07:00

[Editor's Note: This exchange happened after the appearance of an article on Counterpunch entitled "The Revolution Started without Me" by Jack Random. It offers a glimpse of what OWS is dealing with on the front lines of the streets of protest.]

Subject: Occupy Wall Street in Counterpunch
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:20:22 +0000

Hi Jazzman Jack Random,

I read your excellent article in Counterpunch and showed it to some people at People's Park here in Bloomington, Indiana, where we are occupying it in a spin-off of the Wall Street Occupation.

Someone asked, "is he joining us?" and I said I'd write you to ask.

Are you in this movement?

Cordially,

Dave Stewart

Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2011 9:56 PM
Subject: RE: Occupy Wall Street in Counterpunch

Dear Dave,

Thank you. I'm impressed that the movement has made it to Bloomington and that there's a People's Park there. The short answer to your question is: No, I am not. As you might have gathered, I'm an old timer. (To me, Dave Stewart is a great pitcher formerly of the Oakland A's.) My obligations and circumstance don't allow me to engage and occupy as the movement requires. I'm with you in spirit. I believe a cultural revolution is badly needed and that it is primarily a movement of the young.

I will offer you some points of unsolicited advice that I considered including in the piece but decided against. I would emphasize the fifth point.

ADVICE FOR THE CAUSE:

1. Learn to police yourself. To the extent you are viable, you will be attacked. Those who oppose you will hire thugs to infiltrate, to pose as allies, to win trust only to cause trouble and trigger retaliation and backlash. Do not let the movement be hijacked by traitors.

2. Remain peaceful. Your enemies want you to be disorderly and violent. They want a reason to suppress you with force. Give them no reason. When they move on you, as they surely will, retreat and wait. When they abandon territory you wish to occupy, move back in. When the police attack, film it from a thousand angles and points of view. Let there be no doubt as to the nature and intent of police brutality.

3. Focus on the major cities with an established activist community. Use the universities as centers of organization and communication. Occupy the parks. Remind the nation that Hoovervilles sprung up in parks across the land during the first Great Depression. Feed the people and provide for the homeless.

4. Remain open and tolerant. Don not allow the cause to be taken over by those who would exclude others on the basis of ideology. Be engaged in political discourse but do not become political.

5. Invent your own rules and don't listen to old timers like me.

Peace,

Ray Miller, aka Jack Random

P.S. It's too bad Howard Zinn is no longer with us. That's one old timer I'm certain would be with you and fully engaged. For myself, I'll find my own ways to lend support as we move along.

Subject: RE: Occupy Wall Street in Counterpunch
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:09:38 +0000

Dear Jack,

I watched Dave Stewart pitch (on T.V.).

I am 56. I have a good job and am secure financially, etc.

I have slept 'there' theese past nights, as well as hanging out and enjoy talking to all.....people seem to enjoy talking to me. I listen a lot. I don't give advice about "the olden days" (how could I?). It is heartbreaking to hear their stories about how they've tried to do everyting they've been told and yet it has not worked and now they are in a lot of debt and cannot see a way out of it.

I'll take your points to the next meeting (today).

I am certain you will help others (not only me).

When I woke up today, I thought that this was just like a "Hooverville". We ARE encouraging the homeless to join us (they are doing so), and are feeding them. Actually, so far there has been food for all.

IF that is all that this is (we had this conversation last night)...well, that's something. However, we are all trying to 'communicate'...first with each other and then convey that to others. What is going to be interesting is whether all (meaning the homeless) are going to join in our meetings and whether all are going to join the 'community' (while retaining their individuality). In point # 1 you mention 'traitors' and I am glad you did so... In the movie "Battle of Algiers" it can be seen that one of the first steps is to get everyone to 'clean up their act' (no alcohol drunkenness, no prostitution) and that conversation is going to take place today.

I hope that's not too much information.

Believe me, I do more listening than talking. However, when people ask me about stuff I tell them a little and when they ask "how did you learn about that?" I recommend that they read Counterpunch.

I have always enjoyed your postings and hope to read more in the future.

All the best,

Dave

Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2011 1:48 AM
Subject: RE: Occupy Wall Street in Counterpunch

I'm very much impressed. Can I post your words?

I have a notion to share with you: a lot of politicians are expressing sympathy. Ask the local council to lift the curfew on the parks. Ask them to sanction the cause. If you get anywhere, spread the word. It might start something.

My best to you and the cause.

Peace, Random

Subject: RE: Occupy Wall Street in Counterpunch
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:41:35 +0000

Dear Jack,

Sure, you can post my words. Though I 'just' wrote it to you, perhaps someone will enjoy reading it and perhaps (the goal) check out www.counterpunch.org

It is my opinion that this nascent 'movement' has the potential to lose its way or get co-opted by the Democrats.

For example, in the 'outreach meeting' I proposed that not only should 'we' attempt to spread the word to others who have not attended yet, but to outreach WITHIN OURSELVES....meet others we have not met, and while meeting others discuss whatever issues.

To me, the biggest issue is that "we" are protesting events as they stand now. We are NOT bitching about Clinton (NAFTA/Glass-Steagall, to mention only a couple), Bush I or II, we are protesting what is going on NOW.

Therefore, we're not 'hoping for change' in 11/12, nor is the current President helping us (otherwise, we would not be in the situation we are now).

And than, (and it might be prissy), there is the important issue of cleanliness (picking up litter, keeping our bodies clean) and not using the drugs (alcohol, tobacco) which are used to keep us unable to think beyond the present.

These thoughts met with a lot of resistance.

It is my belief that the powers that be are more than willing to allow us to implode, fracture, and then 'admit' that the present power structure is the best.

To ask for a permit is to admit that we are acting under their authority, so I most respectfully will not make that suggestion, but I'll mention it to others.

We have already had a heated discussion about accepting money. Many were vociferous of refusing money IF the Dems offered it to us, but all were willing to accept from local businesses and people. So far, the Dems have been defeated, but daily representatives drop by, as are the Christian kooks wanting to 'pray for us' and last night they set up a hot dog stand, which, of course, is pork and simply awful nutrition.

But I cannot tell those who are hungry not to eat.

Jack, I am totally honored you wrote me back. As I wrote earlier, I have always completely enjoyed your Counterpunch postings.

All the best,

Dave
Bloomington, IN.

Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 12:09 AM
Subject: RE: Occupy Wall Street in Counterpunch

Dear Dave:

It is a delicate balance between inclusion and control. I certainly understand the alcohol ban. It introduces behavioral consequences best avoided. The exclusion of tobacco is a bit trickier. Marijuana introduces a whole new set of issues you may wish to avoid or not.

My suggestion for gaining a waiver on curfew in the parks was intended to either abandon pseudo support or if granted to avoid a conflict with the police. Once again, a delicate balance. You're right not to seek permission.

The issues you're confronting are not easy. The trash issue has become important as it is currently being used in New York and elsewhere as an excuse to clear out the protesters. The money issue is also complex but I support your position.

Time permitting, I appreciate the information and will offer any ideas that may occur to me.

It is a great endeavor you're undertaking. Keep the faith.

Peace, Random

Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011
Subject: RE: Occupy Wall Street in Counterpunch

Dear Jack,

I am so honored you have written me several times, and truly have appreciated your thoughts and suggestions.

You have been very helpful in many ways, and, time permitting, if you happen to have other thoughts I would be happy to hear from you.

I will, as I have in the past, relay your thoughts to others.

Thank you very much for the encouragement!!

And, I look forward to future postings of yours in Counterpunch, whether on this topic or any other.

All the best,
Dave

THE REPUBLICAN FIELD: OPPORTUNISTS, PANDERERS AND PRETENDERS

2011-09-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE by Jack Random. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

In the two-party system of American politics, citizens are ultimately forced to choose between two candidates selected by their respective parties, though neither may represent their interests or points of view.

This goes out to all those voting members of society who consider themselves Republicans or right-leaning independents who hold sway over the shape of government to come: I know that for a variety of reasons from the economy to his legislative record to the swagger in his step to blatant or latent racism, many of you despise Barack Obama.

You despise him at such a visceral level you cannot imagine pulling the lever that awards him a second term under any circumstances. But as you look at the field of Republican candidates, can you honestly imagine electing any of them president?

The current field of nine candidates can be broken down into three tiers.

Third tier candidates are purely symbolic. Some may have an issue or a philosophy to promote. Some are simply clinging to political relevance and wish to hang on to the public spotlight as long as possible. Some may actually believe they have a chance to catch lightning in a bottle when the whole world outside the family circle knows they do not.

Leading the third tier is the pizza man, Herman Cain, who was invited to the party to serve as the token member of a racial minority. The Grand Old Party was in need of a new face after Michael Steele was pushed out as Chairman of the national committee. Where Steele was entirely too reasonable on any number of issues, Cain adheres to the rightwing policy agenda without exception. Could anyone really imagine the Republican Party nominating an angry black man to face Obama? We like his triple-nine game plan (reminds us of the Beatles’ White Album) but his time is about to expire. Don’t forget the pepperoni!

Newt Gingrich is the old-timer of the third tier candidates. Newt has not had a new idea since the 1980’s but he does have a new book to sell. The idea that Gingrich is an intellectual is pure mythology. He’s a fast talking peddler of used goods who lost his sales base to Wal-Mart in 1994 but never lost his pitch. He’s Willy Loman, the tragic father in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, with a hard-dying dream of Alaska and better days. He’s an old man with a young wife and a lifestyle he can no longer afford.

Newt’s only hope is that someone will take him on as a vice presidential mate due to the paucity of viable options. Slim hope indeed.

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum must be baffled. His party has moved to his Christian fundamentalist, far right positions on every issue from immigration to abortion rights to equal rights for homosexuals yet no one seems to like him. Maybe it’s his support of animal rights or former Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter or maybe it’s that Dan Quayle look in his eyes as if nothing is going on in there beyond a rehearsal of his next line. His function in this campaign is to challenge the frontrunners for any lapses on rightwing policy – notably immigration.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul once again joins the Republican field to become the face of libertarianism. On that level, his is a noble cause. The trouble is: He is too often politically tone deaf and his particular brand of libertarianism is far too compromised. Granted, a pure libertarian would rightly be accused of anarchism. Still, no libertarian should ever wish to impose his morality on others, as Paul would do on abortion and gay marriage, and no libertarian should ever be allowed to fall back on states’ rights as the congressman so often does. In this round of Republican debates, “states’ rights” has become a means of avoiding hard issues and inconsistencies. Mitt Romney should not be allowed to do so with mandated health insurance and Paul should know better. It’s a pandering position and weakens his portrait as a courageous leader.

The congressman deserves credit for making his antiwar, anti-empire policies acceptable to his party. His truth telling on the tenth anniversary of September 11, however admirable, would have sealed his fate had it not already been ordained.

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson made a surprise appearance in the recent Florida debate, staking his claim to the libertarian banner. He supports replacing the current multilevel tax system with a consumption tax, an idea with considerable merit. His presence could push Paul to live up to the libertarian creed.

The question for the third tier candidates is: How long can they last? The money is drying up and hope is fading fast.

To a large extent, the same is true of the two members of the second tier, Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman. Both began this campaign with a base of financial and political support. Both find their prospects diminished for distinctly different reasons.

As the only woman in the field, it is impossible to see Bachman as anything but a stand-in for Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin. Bachman was catapulted to fame by an odd exchange with MSNBC host Chris Mathews, in which she advocated an investigation into the un-American attitudes and activities of fellow members of congress. Mathews quickly painted her into a corner. It was as if she had never heard of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the infamous witch-hunt of the 1950’s. Paradoxically, the exchange gave her status and a loyal constituency in the far right. She became a leading fundraiser and when the Tea Party came along she was first on board.

Despite her frequent gaffs, her presidential campaign was gaining traction until Governor Rick Perry entered the contest and promptly stole her thunder. Bachman’s slender thread of hope now is that the Tea Party will tire of their new hero or that the Texas Governor will shoot himself in the foot.

Jon Huntsman entered the race hoping that at some point Republicans might decide they want to win the general election. He was poised as an alternative to fellow Mormon Mitt Romney whom nobody loves and the Tea Party hates. Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty had the same idea but he had no stomach for hardball politics. Huntsman is still standing but with each passing debate it is becoming clear that he has no place in today’s Republican Party. He is not strong enough, angry enough or ideologically pure enough. Unless party dynamics change he will drop out before the primaries begin.

In all probability, the Republican standard bearer for 2012 will be decided between the two top tier candidates: Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.

There are two ways of looking at the Governor of Texas and both have validity. One is that he is George W. Bush only taller. The other is that he is Mitt Romney with a drawl.

Like Romney, Governor Perry has had to reinvent himself. It is hard to imagine that this Texas tough guy, proud of his state’s record of putting hundreds to death during his tenure, and stubborn as a Laredo mule, once was a Dixie Democrat who had no reservations in supporting the candidacy of Albert Gore against his predecessor in the Governor’s Mansion.

Did Perry have a revelation? Did a partisan God come down from the mountain to transform the Democratic state representative who voted for a $5.7 billion dollar tax increase into a staunch anti-tax, anti-government Republican? Or was it pure political opportunism?

The governor pivoted quickly enough from a Social Security Ponzi scheme to Social Security reform. He squirmed and stammered in Florida where his stance is electoral suicide. It was Florida and the Jewish vote he had in mind when he issued his decree on the Palestinian question. With an analysis that would fail to penetrate the skin of a teenaged girl, Perry declared that he favors Israel no matter what the Israelis or the Palestinians do or say. The Neocons have found a home with Perry the Panderer and who knows but that he just might win. Stranger things have happened.

Perry presaged his presidential candidacy with a Christian fundamentalist extravaganza and some media planted stories about the Texas economic miracle. Reporter Rich Wartzman of the LA Times made the Governor’s case with this pointed proposition:

“If you care about putting people back to work when nearly 14 million are unemployed, maybe Texas has something to teach us.”

With the latest census data on poverty in America, the counterpoint is clear:

If you care about putting food on the table and a roof over your head at a time when nearly 50 million Americans are living below the poverty line, maybe New Hampshire has something to teach us. Certainly not Texas.

With an economy bolstered by what Mitt Romney termed four aces (no income tax, anti-labor laws, a Republican legislature and oil), Texas ranked 49th of the fifty states in the number of its citizens living below the poverty line. If you think that’s unfair because it doesn’t account for the number of people living in the state, you’re right. It’s unfair to California. On a per capita basis, Texas ranked 46th, ahead of Alabama, New Mexico, Louisiana and Mississippi.

That is what the Texas economic model is all about. Perry brags about the number of jobs he’s created but he never mentions that those jobs were insufficient to lift Texans out of poverty. If you’re a typical Texan, you work at a minimum wage job or worse, you have no health or retirement benefits, and you’re struggling to survive.

Nevertheless, both Perry and Romney have made it clear that they believe Texas is the pride of the nation and they want to bring the Texas model to the rest of us. If you live in Alabama, New Mexico, Louisiana or Mississippi, that might be good news. If you live in the other 45 states (other than Texas), it does not bode well.

America’s most famous Mormon since Joseph Smith, Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts for a brief four years. During his tenure, he supported and opposed civil unions for same sex couples, supported and opposed abortion rights, supported and opposed stem cell research, and of course sponsored the most comprehensive government sponsored health care program in the nation. As a presidential aspirant, Romney found new love for the National Rifle Association and signed the anti-tax pledge.

Romney has an explanation for every change of policy but the more the people listen to him the more they realize there is nothing there. He believes whatever the polls tell him to believe. He wants to be president and everything he says and does is owing to that ambition.

As a businessman, Romney was responsible for eliminating more jobs than he ever created. As co-founder of Bain Capital, he specialized in leveraged buyouts, buying companies and enforcing layoffs to boost the bottom line. Romney made a fortune on the misfortune of workers and always gave a liberal tithing to the Church of the Latter Day Saints. He is just what the corporate doctor ordered: His expertise is austerity, by which he means austerity for us and prosperity for the elite.

Now Romney wants to lead the nation. He speaks with great admiration for the Texas economic model of mass poverty, cheap workers, corporate free reign, anti-labor laws and bountiful oil.

He is in fact the last person on the planet that should be president at this time – unless of course that honor goes to Governor Rick Perry.

I am by no means enthralled with the prospect of a second Obama term but given an alternative from this field of opportunists, panderers and pretenders, there is no choice at all.

Is it too late for a third option? Maybe. Maybe not. The electorate is yearning for someone to stand up to China and India. The people would line up from Bakersfield to Bangor, Maine, from Tampa to Tacoma, to support a viable candidate who offered a simple pledge: Bring the jobs back home!

The opportunity for a true labor candidate is so clear and powerful I would not be surprised if we didn’t soon find the slogan plastered on Mitt Romney pamphlets and bumper stickers with a claim of copyright.

Of course, in his hands it would be an outright lie.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, GLOBAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

DEBT CEILING MADNESS

2011-07-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

From PUBLIC CITIZEN, Robert Weissman, President.

Washington is in the grip of a fever. It’s hard to find a word other than lunacy to describe what’s going on. We are veering toward potential economic catastrophe. And Congress is hung up on a debate that shouldn’t be occurring. It is debating an imaginary problem that conjures scary future scenarios but ignores dire existing circumstances. The consensus proffered solution to the imaginary problem would damage our country and further weaken our economy.

Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads, but they are disagreeing primarily about how much harm they want to impose. That’s a very consequential disagreement, but it ignores the fact that we don’t need to impose any harm at all.

Let’s correct some of the upside-down components of the current debate.

1. There should not be a debate over increasing the nation’s debt ceiling.

Prior approval of increases — more than 100 — have been routine, and this time should be no different. Raising the debt ceiling merely authorizes the U.S. government to make good on spending previously authorized by Congress.

It is true that Republicans in Congress signaled some time ago that they would not easily agree to another increase in the debt ceiling. That’s why Democrats should have passed an increase in the last Congress, a move they declined to make because of fear of electoral consequences. At very least, the administration should have insisted on increasing the debt ceiling as a condition of agreeing to the December 2010 deal to extend the Bush tax cuts.

2. The government should be running larger, not smaller, deficits.

The country has not recovered from the Great Recession. One in six people who would like a full-time job are unable to find one. We don’t have to worry about hard times coming sometime in the future — we are living in hard times right now!

To fuel a stalled economy and put people back to work, the U.S. government should be spending more money. This is basic Keynesian economics. It shouldn’t be controversial. State governments are starved for cash, and laying off thousands of teachers, librarians, fire fighters and police. If the federal government gave the states block grants, they could keep people employed, and keep delivering needed services. Our country, and our economy, would be stronger.

Much of the country is suffering through a summer of staggering heat waves. This should be an urgent reminder of the need to take radical action to mitigate catastrophic climate change. Especially with so many people out of work, the government should be spending money to employ people to retrofit buildings around the country and to invest in R&D on solar and wind energy.

And, of course, there is no shortage of other pressing needs to which people can be put to work. By contrast, cutting spending right now will worsen our very severe economic crisis, and push more people out of work.

3. Our economic problems are present, not future.

It is both bewildering and unconscionable that pontificating politicians and pundits express so much concern for imagined future economic problems while ignoring the real and present suffering that pervades the country. There is also some very fuzzy math that takes over the discussion. If it continues to grow economically, and if it makes wise investments, the country is going to be significantly richer in the years and decades ahead. We’re not going to be poorer, irrespective of the size of the national debt.

4. It’s actually not very hard to find a few trillion dollars.

To say that the debt ceiling debate shouldn’t be taking place, and that we should be running larger deficits, is not to say there aren’t appropriate areas of the budget to cut, and appropriate revenue streams to tap.

On the spending side, among many other things, we could:
• Save more than a trillion dollars over 10 years by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Cut more than $500 billion from the Department of Defense budget by replacing private contractors and eliminating weapons systems the Pentagon says it does not need. Hundreds of billions of more in savings are available through modest cuts at DoD. The United States would still have, by far, the world’s largest military. A very modest proposal from the Congressional Progressive Caucus totals $2.3 trillion in savings over 10 years through ending the wars and cutting the Defense budget.
• Save more than $150 billion in pharmaceutical costs just by negotiating better prices with Big Pharma. More aggressive moves to fix the broken pharmaceutical development system could offer savings far larger, with the government obtaining a significant portion of well over a trillion dollars in savings on pharmaceutical expenditures over 10 years.
On the revenue side, among many other things, we could:
• Tax Wall Street speculation and raise between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
• End offshore tax haven abuses, and raise a trillion dollars over the next decade.
• Close corporate tax loopholes. By way of illustration, getting rid of just two large breaks, deferral of overseas revenue and accelerated depreciation, would raise about $700 billion. The Treasury Department lists $365 billion in corporate tax breaks being gifted annually — that’s $3.65 trillion over the 10-year period talked about in these debt debates! Thanks to all the loopholes and escapes, corporations are benefiting from record low tax rates — 21% on average (this is what they are actually paying, not the nominal rate). For a handful, the tax system is a source of revenue. Citizens for Tax Justice looked at 12 major companies that together made $171 billion in profits from 2008-2010 and found that the dozen companies together paid negative $2.5 billion in taxes, thanks to $62 billion in tax subsidies.
• Tax capital gains as ordinary income, and raise $1 trillion.
Many of these and other sensible budget ideas are included in the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s People’s Budget. A key thing to keep in mind about all these savings and increased revenue is that they should be ploughed back into public investments and public priorities. We need more net spending, not less. Over time, we need to reduce the deficit, but much of that will occur automatically, as the country moves back to fuller employment and more robust growth.

We do not need to touch, nor should we touch, Medicare or Medicaid. Nor should we tamper with Social Security, which is financed separately from the rest of the federal budget and has nothing to do with the debt. It’s impossible at this point to know how the debt ceiling debate is going to play out. It’s also highly uncertain what happens if the U.S. government defaults — catastrophe may follow, or it may not.

What is certain is that irrationality is ruling the day.

It’s past time to leave behind this orchestrated and false crisis. Our country faces a legion of real and serious problems. It’s time we got to work taking them on.

See also: "Suicide Watch: Debt Ceiling Showdown" by Jack Random. Posted on Counterpunch 7/29/11.

THE BRIDGE TO AUSTERITY (Made in China)

2011-07-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

By Jack Random

In 1989 the Loma Prieta earthquake brought down a section of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, weakening the structure to such an extent that rebuilding the 1936 monument to engineering was inevitable. When completed in 2013 the bridge, like virtually everything stocked in Wal-Mart, Target or any other mass merchandise chain, will bear on its underside the insignia: Made in China.

If ever there was a clear example of what is wrong with the American economy this is it. The state of California claims it will save $400 million on an estimated $7.2 billion project for its betrayal of American industry. The state does not say how much of that $400 million could have been saved by applying for federal funding which would have required the structure to employ American manufacturers.

Let it be clear: This has little to nothing to do with Free Trade. China can overcome the cost of transporting a bridge 6,500 miles not only because it employs cheap labor but also because the Chinese manufacturing industry is government owned and subsidized. If our government were to subsidize manufacturing it would be decried as a violation of the principles of Free Trade. Indeed, it would.

The fact is: Free Trade does not exist. International corporations and their proxies in government employ the principles of Free Trade selectively to justify labor exploitation and to maximize profits.

In the fantasy world of Free Trade all parties operate on an equal playing field according to the laws of supply and demand. In the real world everything a government does or fails to do creates imbalance. If government provides universal health care as they do in Europe it creates imbalance. If government provides incentives to drill for oil or produce ethanol it creates imbalance. If government guarantees a minimum standard of living wages and decent working conditions it creates imbalance. If government owns an industry and guarantees its success the imbalance is obvious. If it sanctions indentured servitude and neglects slave labor the imbalance is equally obvious.

The fact is: In a civilized world that recognizes the fundamental rights of labor, exploitation of labor is itself a subsidy and all nations that embrace those rights have a responsibility to punish nations that do not. They can do so by enforcing trade sanctions or by subsidizing their own industries.

In a perfect world, all merchants would enjoy equal opportunity while bearing equal responsibility. In the beginning there was equity. But then greed took hold and one merchant decided he could buy out the competition. Monopoly trumped free enterprise and the system became imbalanced and dysfunctional. Employers were empowered to require workers to work longer hours at lower wages under increasingly difficult conditions. Sweatshops and child labor became common. Retirement and medical assistance were nonexistent. If a worker was hurt on the job he became unemployed.

As the abuses mounted it became mandatory for a democratic government to act. Child labor was banned, working standards were mandated, and minimum wage was instituted. Monopolies were broken apart to restore competitive balance and workers gained the right to organize. Unions became the counterbalance to the power of big business.

The system flourished. For the first time in history, working people joined in the prosperity of the nation, laying the foundation for a middle class. Working people were empowered to buy goods and services beyond the necessities of life. Each generation looked forward to a better standard of living for the next. Businesses prospered on middle class consumption.

Social Security and Medicare answered a basic need while relieving employers of the burden.

The system worked not because businesses, industries and corporations were allowed to do as they pleased but because unions and government struck an equitable balance.

Now we have lost the balance because one party decided to serve their corporate masters exclusively and the only viable alternative decided it was easier to go along than to fight for the working people. When the economy went global it provided an opportunity to reset the table and labor was not invited. We no longer hear the term Monopoly but now we have corporations that are considered too big to fail. We have politicians who would prefer to see the economy collapse and working people suffer if it will give them a competitive advantage in the next election. We have governments at the state level declaring war on unions even though organized labor is but a whisper of the roar it once was. We have bipartisan agreement that the national debt is our dominant priority though real unemployment exceeds ten percent and those jobs that are available no longer offer a living wage.

We are badly out of balance and our government is as dysfunctional as our economic system. We are sustaining wars on multiple fronts while we are being told there is no choice but to welcome an age of austerity.

In the case of the Bay Bridge, the deal with China was struck in 2006 when the economy was relatively strong. The federal government was willing to make up at least some of the difference by subsidizing the project but the state of California under the leadership of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger placed no value on American jobs and American workers. Schwarzenegger and his co-conspirators in government ran the state like a corporation and corporations have no values, no sense of justice, and no principles of fair play.

As a result, when the new Bay Bridge is opened for business it will represent far more than a triumph of engineering; it will symbolize the systematic degradation of our economy. It will stand as a monument to the corporate world of greed and profiteering. It will be a magnificent memorial to the once-prospering middle class.

It will be a bridge to the age of austerity. In other nations it has begun in earnest and the people have taken to the streets in protest by the tens and hundreds of thousands. In other nations they have come to the realization that they were sold a bill of goods. They have watched the moneychangers run their economies into the ground while they escaped with all the loot. The ordinary working people are angry, fed up, and they are not going to take it lying down. What is happening now in Greece and Spain is a preview of what will happen in America if the austerity hysterics have their way.

When will we begin to wake up? When will we realize that we are all in this together? When California turns its back on workers in the steel mills of Michigan, we all lose. When union busting becomes a government mandate, working itself from state to state, every worker in America loses.

When our elected officials throw up their hands and claim they can do nothing about the exportation of our jobs to cheap labor markets because the capitalist bible of Free Trade economics forbids it, we must ask ourselves: Whom do they really represent?

We are at a crossroad. What we do now may well determine the kind of world future generations will inherit. Will it be a world in which only the wealthy can pursue higher education? Will it be a world that sacrifices the elderly and infirm so the elite can enjoy ever-lower tax rates? Will it be a world in which fathers and mothers must work two jobs just to pay down the debt?

Yes, we are at a crossroad and the only real power we have left is the vote. If we choose to squander it on politicians who preach austerity and raise the flag of Free Trade, then our cause is lost and our future is bleak.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

SLEEPING WITH THE DEVIL: The Mideast Democracy Movement

2011-06-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

By Jack Random

Since our emergence as a world power we as a nation have all too often been willing to partner with dictators and tyrants to further our financial or strategic interests. We have formed alliances with some of the worst characters in modern history, from Pinochet to the Shah of Iran, from Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden. Sleep with the devil and it’s bound to leave a mark on the progeny.

With the emergence of a youth inspired movement toward democracy in the Middle East, we have an opportunity to right our course and begin to make amends.

There is nothing easy about the way forward for while the urge to help in the cause of democracy is powerful it is often not clear whom we should be supporting. It is the cause that must move us and not the players. We are in a bind not only in the Middle East but throughout the world because we chose expedience over principle. We need not and should not repeat that pattern of shortsighted policy.

It is entirely possible if not probable that some of the freedom fighters in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere are allies of our enemies. That is to a large extent our own legacy and our penance is to support democracy regardless.

The Bush administration infamously failed the test in Palestine when the White House pushed for elections only to disavow them when the results did not meet with our expectations. Like nearly everything the Bush team touched, it was a blunder for which we are still paying.

President Obama, for all the criticism heaped upon him from the left and the right, has attempted to strike a balance. He will not forget the Palestinian people any more than he will neglect the Israelis. His initiative has made abundantly clear what we ought to have already known: There will be no peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as long as Benjamin Netanyahu is Prime Minister of Israel. Netanyahu may gather applause in a Republican congress but the Israeli people must recognize his failure to lead. It falls to the people now to replace him. That is the price of democracy and we must honor it. We can only hope to hold the aggressive elements of both parties in check until a new leader is chosen.

What the events of the Middle East are teaching us is that it is always bad policy to support dictators and oppressors. While such policies may disguise themselves under shrouds of sophistication they are shortsighted and naïve.

The desire of the people for self-determination cannot ultimately be denied. To stand in opposition is to be on the wrong side of history.

Get on board or be left behind.

This is not the time for hand wringing and cautionary tales. If we are to retain any self-respect in this rapidly evolving world, we must lend a hand. If we cannot join the people on the streets of protest, we can at least applaud them from where we sit. We can call out attempts to subvert the cause or disrupt the march to democracy. We can spread the word and keep the story alive. We can push our governments to do the right thing by supporting the people.

If in fact the events in the Middle East can be traced to the words and organization of a handful of activists on the worldwide web, then the dream is alive and all things on heaven and earth are possible. Little wonder the world’s established hierarchy of power is trembling at the prospects. Nothing frightens the elite more than democracy in action, democracy taken literally, democracy spreading like a blazing fire, democracy from the ground up.

This is not what they intended when they summoned the cry of democracy to justify their wars for oil. Democracy was only a word then, just a pleasant thought for the peasants to ponder, just a dream, a passing fancy and nothing at all to worry about.

As the cry now moves from Tunis to Tripoli, from Cairo to Manama, from Sana’a to Amman and from Damascus to Jerusalem, the ruling class has something very tangible to worry about. The gate is open and the march is on.

Write it up as yet another example of the law of unintended consequences. Greed and opportunity led the corporate dynasties to push the economic system beyond its capacity for profit. A global collapse could only be averted with a massive infusion of capital from the pockets of the working people. The resultant depreciation of currency contributed to a worldwide food crisis. When families can no longer afford to put food on the table, people take to the streets and frustration grows into movements and real systemic change is not only possible but mandatory.

Say what you will, doubt them at your own peril, these young dissidents of oppressed nations have already achieved more than the Paris youth rebellion of 1968, the Summer of Love 1969 and the largest antiwar protest in history on the eve of the Iraq War. They have affected real change. They have accomplished what we can only dream.

More than anything else, these events should serve as a reminder of the power and inevitability of democracy. Born of the individual and collective drive to control one’s own destiny, democracy is like the wind: You may find it discomforting, you may find it disturbing but you cannot deny it. You can only seek shelter from the storm.

All these rightwing Neocons who could not resist their knee-jerk support of all wars in the initial stages of this movement have since backtracked for fear that we cannot control the outcomes. Newsflash: If your support of democracy is contingent on outcome (for example, the 2000 election), then you do not support democracy at all.

Anyone who studies history knows that we as a nation have rarely supported democracies in their march to independence. At best we have been indifferent. At worst we have actively supported the despots who stood in the way.

We may never know exactly what was intended in Iraq but what we bought at an extraordinary price was a lasting antagonism, an unpaid debt and a bloody dagger of revenge. What we will leave in Afghanistan, if indeed we are ever able to extract ourselves from that nightmare, is a compounding of that debt.

It will require a great deal of time and effort to pay down that debt but we can begin now by ushering in a new era of unwavering support for freedom, democracy and human rights.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

TAKING BACK YOUR PARTY

2011-05-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

A PLEA FOR MODERATION BY BILL PEACH

[Editor's Note: This writer hails from Nashville, Tennessee.]

In 2004, Christie Todd Whitman, published a book titled It’s My Party Too. She had been governor of New Jersey and head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Christie, a member of a distinguished and wealthy eastern Republican family, resigned her position in the Bush administration because “fundamentalist ideologues substituted right-wing doctrine for science.” She believed the Republican Party had been taken over by “social fundamentalists.”

I cannot speak for Republicans, but I feel their pain. I campaigned for George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy during racial strife and opposition to war. I understand the frustration of a divided political party. Ideas that I did not see as radical or revolutionary were not ideas embraced by moderate Democrat and independent voters. I have since been more main stream in the elections of moderates and pragmatists -- Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

A few weeks ago, the Williamson County Republican Party invited and hosted Geert Wilders for a meet and greet at party headquarters prior to his rally at the Cornerstone Church in Nashville. He came under the aegis of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition, a group with a radical image not compatible with local Republican politics. I don’t know if the local party leaders consulted the membership, but the event brought national exposure and evoked some concern and disaffection among moderate Republicans.

Those of us who embrace the principles of Democratic politics have finally found a unity within our own party. Once labeled as liberal or progressive, which none of us found offensive, we have again become the party of the political center. The most evident rebirth of democracy came in support of the students, parents, and teachers of public education. It emerged dramatically in New York, in one Congressional district, in an unprecedented upset, possibly because of a single issue. The once moderate Republican has been alienated by the movement that shattered the party.

My concerns have been primarily with the Tennessee Legislature. I spent 24 years on two school boards. We have always opposed random pieces of legislation that were simple errors in judgment, not in the best interests of classroom instruction or student performance. This session seems to have been a calculated attack on public education.

We would like to believe that the five or six Republican members of the House and Senate who drafted and introduced recent legislation were isolated anomalies from a move to privatize or abolish public education. The movement is not unique to Tennessee, and extends beyond the misinterpretation of American history.

None of us, Republican or Democrat, want to cry wolf, or be prophets of doom, or purveyors of conspiracy theories. This shift of political power is not a threat to the Democratic Party; it could be the return ticket to majority status. Politically we should strategically welcome it. However, it does not bode well for the integrity or future of the Republican Party, nor does it enhance the well-being of American politics.

Whatever this phenomenon is, it did not happen overnight. We can’t blame it on President Bush or President Obama, or the deficit, or the debt, or three wars. The movement has not addressed economic ills, or jobs, or Main Street, or small business. We will address those eventually, but for now we are forced to endure the folly of distraction, and partisan allegiance to corporate and social ideology.

We have created a monster. I think President Eisenhower may have been the visionary who saw this coming. His experience in Europe had taught him that the rise of extreme movements was not unique to time or place. Authoritarianism could take root anywhere, even in America. This movement has roots in the McCarthy era in a mood of extreme nationalism and fear, intensified by ostentatious religious zealotry.

There are many names that were early players in the abduction of the Republican Party and the Christian faith. R. J. Rushdoony and Robert Welch of the John Birch Society were forerunners of the Religious Right and the sequential images of Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, Grover Norquist, Richard Viguerie, Irving and William Kristol, Tim LaHaye, and Pat Robertson. The establishment of “the private schools for the white students” or “seg academies” as we called them, followed Brown v. Board of Education, almost sixty years ago.

But even now, I sense a “distrust of democracy.” There is organized opposition to public education, women’s rights, small business, religious freedom, health care, and voting rights. There is revisionist denial of slavery, a renewal of primitive fundamentalist ideology, and a misguided plea for “God’s government” defined by standards of extremism and intolerance of the fifties, and a cultural vengeance in a penal code derived from the laws of Leviticus.

I watch an “intrusive government” invade the heart, the mind and the body. I hear words of hatred and religious intolerance from voices that bring ignominy to our tradition of faith. I see efforts to reverse the march of freedom in the work place. I am still optimistic that both parties, Republican and Democratic, will speak in opposition to extremism. It may take two or more election cycles, but I think the moderates will return and take back their party, and conservative sanity will find some viability slightly right of center, and restore a two-party system about which we will feel no need for apology.

Bill Peach
615-306-1731
billpeach@att.net
Politics, Preaching & Philosophy
http://billpeach.wordpress.com/

Take Your War Away From Me

2011-04-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

by Chris Mansel

here's to the aged and to the ill
who can't afford their medical bills
to the protester being beaten
voicing his opinion up a great big hill
to the Iranian child who has no idea
where america begins and Iraq ends

if I were an immigrant in a Haitian land
I'd be surviving however I could stand
on the Ivory Coast where oil does flow
I'd be wondering when the money will show
Darfur, Darfur wait for the rallying cry
how pathetic is it when its fashionable
when people die

air strikes always level the wrong ground
you can hear them like a screaming sound
we talk about the promises the government made
helicopters used to bring aid, now raids
stack rubble to the sky it won't hold a window
the dead of the world are more than just shadows

chorus:

take my land but don't take my life
don't burn my house in the middle of the night
please take your war away from me
please take your war away from me

Chris Mansel

Jake's Word: Shut it Down!

2011-04-10T22:21:00.000-07:00

[Editor's Note: This is Jake Berry's response to the latest Jazzman Chronicle: Shut it Down! The Irrational Rage of Willful Ignorance - reprinted below.]

One of your best screeds ever. Right on target. You sound like you've been living in the South all your life.

That is what all of this hogwash passing for politics is - old school Southern politics. It basically comes down to a simple equation: If you have a problem it is someone else's fault. The solution is to destroy this fantasy chimera even if it kills you and your children and their children in the process. Someone else is always to blame.

Freedom means liberty and responsibility. Everyone wants freedom. Freedom to get rich or die trying. Freedom to curse your neighbor one minute and pray for him the next. Freedom to do whatever you damn well please and blame someone else for the damage you do.

I agree with you. Let it crash and burn. It seems to be the only way we'll ever recover from subservience to the golden calf of Wall Street and the loud and proud stupidity of those who are so desperate to vote against their own best interests.

Too bad. While it may be true that all empires eventually crumble, the U.S. doesn't have to shut down just yet. But if that is what the people want, then give them what they want. They'll find someone to blame.

Rave on brother. We listen and learn.

Jake

A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

SHUT IT DOWN!

THE IRRATIONAL RAGE OF WILLFUL IGNORANCE

By Jack Random

“Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you? Go ahead, make my day.”

Harry Callahan, Sudden Impact (1983)

Late Friday night the word came down that congress made a deal with the White House to avert a government shutdown. Too bad. If history teaches us anything it is that the American electorate does not believe in close calls.

In the last hour of the Bush administration, when congress was compelled to hand over billions to Wall Street in order to avoid a global economic meltdown, you would have thought we learned a lesson. We did not. We watched as the government reinstated the same catastrophic policies that placed us at the brink of catastrophic implosion.

We learned nothing. We continue to vent our rage at anyone but the criminal party. We continue to vote for pandering politicians who claim that government is the problem. We continue to support policies that favor the corporate elite.

I am reminded of the man who shot himself in the foot to cure a bunion. Seeing the damage the doctor said: Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t have a headache.

At some point we have to come to terms with the fact that we are a republic, a representative democracy, and therefore we are ultimately responsible for the actions of our elected officials. We enable them. We instruct them to get right back on that runaway train and point it straight over the cliff.

Feeling lucky, punk? Go ahead, make my day!

We all lived through the Bush years yet we are still listening to the same foreign policy geniuses that blundered their way into two losing wars in the Middle East. (If you thought we won in Iraq, check back in five years: Iran won the war and we were the biggest losers outside of the Iraqis.)

We all watched the free trade, free enterprise, free market economic purists drive us to the precipice of a great depression yet here we are doubling down on the same policies that created the crisis.

Like a compulsive gambler who’s been days too long at the tables, we’ve decided gambling is not the problem. It’s all a matter of timing. This time it will all work out. We’ll draw the lucky ace of spades and break the bank running.

Why shouldn’t it work out? Last time around it worked just fine for the CEO’s and the wealthy shareholders. They got to keep our money while we got our homes foreclosed, our jobs shipped out, our unions busted, our rights nullified and our wages cut to the bone.

Voices on the left who are not afraid of summoning phrases like social good and income inequality must be growing tired to death reminding people who work for a living that the parties in power do not represent our interests, the Tea Party least of all. They must grow tired defending the ineffectual Democrats over the offensive Republicans on the ever-diminishing grounds of least harm.

It’s like turning to the Don’s accountant to resolve the problems of the Don.

I know I’ve grown tired, damned tired, and I feel I’m down to two choices: Vent or walk away.

So go ahead, fellow voters, make my day: Shut it down! Let’s get a good look at life without the government. Let’s go back to square one. Let’s get back to the days of America’s greatness! Let’s have an industrial age without industry! Let’s work for lower pay! Let there be no safety standards, no inspectors, no regulation or oversight. If people die, so be it. It’s the cost of doing business. We have too many people anyway. Let a few thousand or million perish at the hands of the industrial machine. There will be more for the rest of us!

Why half measures? Let’s give all the money and all the resources to the elite. They’re better educated and nicer looking. They know how to behave themselves at dinner parties. Let them have it all and let the rest of us live in accordance with their wishes. What’s good for Wall Street is good for Pennsylvania Avenue!

Let them dig for oil in the national parks. Let them burn coal until the skies block the sun! Let them mark the way to the next mass extinction. Let them fight wars for oil and water and uranium with the blood of our working sons and daughters!

Go ahead, decimate social security, scrap Medicare and bring back a time where child labor is not only possible but necessary! Bring back squalor and recklessness in the workplace! Bring back segregated schools and reserve higher learning for the wealthiest elite.

Go ahead, let them have it all but don’t you dare say you did it for your children. You sold the children out along with the rest of us so at least have the courage to say so: You did it because you didn’t want to pay your fair share.

At least have the foresight to know your children and grandchildren will curse you for your selfish folly.

Go ahead, shut it down, let it crash and burn! But then, when it’s all done and the destruction has moved across the land like waves of a tsunami, have the decency to stand aside and let those who saw it coming and sounded a warning in vain, build a new world from the ashes of a fallen empire.

Let that be your final legacy.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

REMEMBERING BASEBALL & BRYAN STOW

2011-04-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

(Please send out to as many people as you can)

To All Sports Fans,

We should all be thinking a lot about Bryan Stow, the Giants fan who is in a coma right now after being attacked after a game. This Monday night, the Giants and Dodgers will begin a second series, this time in San Francisco. But this issue has nothing to do with the Giants or the Dodgers. It’s about what it means to be a fan.

We all come out to watch the game of baseball to support our teams, to have a great time at the ballpark, and to remember and pay homage to the childhood wonder that we all felt growing up watching our heroes play. For me, being a fan is about knowing that I see the game exactly how my dad taught me to… even a little bit clearer (just like he always knew that I would). It’s about looking up with my little brothers and telling him that the Giants finally won it all! (And knowing he’s celebrating wherever he is.)

But to those fans who see yourselves as something like rival gang/club members protecting the honor of your teams, with violence if necessary, please know that you are missing the point, and you are truly disgracing your heroes. Giants fans out there talking about REVENGE for Bryan Stow, you are just as misled and in need of a look in the mirror as those FEW Dodgers fans who committed this crime in the first place, whether you act on it or not. And I hope a few of you are offended by me saying that because you absolutely need to think about the feelings and thoughts that resulted in that man being forced to fight for his life his life right now.

I mean I Haaaaaaaaaaate the Dodgers. Lol. But I why in the world should that extend to their fans??? Somewhere there is a Dodger fan with the EXACT same story as mine. A Dodger fan raises his hands just as high as a Giants fan when his team is doing well, and for the same reasons. The same goes for fans of the Yankees and Red Sox. We all just want to someday turn to our children, holding a ballpark hotdog, and watch with a smile as they experience the game for the first time.

So Monday night, regardless of the score at the end of the game, if you should come across a rival fan, look him in the eyes and tip your cap, (you can even refuse to smile if you like. lol), and give a fellow Sports Fan the respect that you both deserve.

John Miller

THE OBAMA DOCTRINE: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

2011-03-29T22:42:00.000-07:00

A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE By Jack Random. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

“It is time to become what American principles and values insist that we must become. It is time to be what our leaders have always claimed that we were: a beacon of justice, human rights and democracy. It is time to fulfill the promise of our forefathers. Our destiny cannot and must not be to dominate the world but rather to improve the lot of human kind.”

The Jazzman Chronicles, Volume One, Principles of Foreign Policy.

I believe in democracy. I believe in the right of the people to self-determination. I believe in civil liberties and fundamental human rights. I believe that unjustified war is the ultimate violation of human rights and, therefore, the use of arms to settle conflicts must be a last option.

I am not a pacifist. I believe there are circumstances that justify war. For a war to be truly justified, these circumstances cannot be defined ad hoc. They cannot be adopted impromptu to fit the circumstance of a crisis. They must be defined as a matter of policy and principle.

Clearly, a war is justified if a nation or its allies is attacked by another nation. By this essential and fundamental standard, no major military action since World War II has been justified. The Korean War was avoidable. The Vietnam War was a crime against civilization. The Iraq Wars were strategic. The Afghan-Pakistan War was unwise and unnecessary. The people who misled us into that war belittled those who called for a police action but that is exactly what our response should have been. A nation does not respond to a terrorist attack with the blunt instrument of war unless it wants to elevate the terrorist group to the status of sovereignty.

Politicos and politicians of all stripes can say that Afghanistan is now Obama’s war but that rings hollow. Libya is in fact the only military action instigated by the Obama administration. Thus far it remains uncertain and vague as a statement of policy. The administration may have its own reasons for this obscuration of purpose but if we want to determine fairly and objectively whether this war meets the standard of a justified action we must apply principles and policies already established.

Toward that end I have consulted my own prior writings for the principles that apply to the current action in Libya.

Principle: The United States will not engage in interventions that support non-democratic governments or governments that violate the inalienable rights of its citizens.

While it would seem that this principle would argue against Muammar Gaddafi it does not argue for intervention. Gaddafi is a despot and his government is tyrannical but we know very little about the opposition and what kind of government they would in fact bring. Moreover, we have neither the right nor the capacity to depose every despot in the world. Therefore the justification for this war must originate elsewhere.

Principle: Our nation will take appropriate action to prevent, inhibit or halt genocide.

This was the rationale Bill Clinton used for intervention in Kosovo where we were told genocide was under way. While there is evidence that massacres occurred on both sides of that conflict, the definition of genocide likely relies more on massive dislocation than on an attempt to exterminate the Muslim population. There is strong evidence that the US led NATO intervention may have enabled a reverse genocide (see “The Truth About Bosnia and Kosovo” by David Icke). By any objective account, the case for intervention in Kosovo is far more complex and less compelling than we have been led to believe.

Leaving an analysis of Kosovo aside, is there compelling evidence that genocide was about to occur in Libya? After the bombing began Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quick to claim that a massacre was prevented in Benghazi. Maybe so. Maybe not. Any number of scenarios could have played out. A genuine truce might have been negotiated in lieu of a NATO attack or stiff sanctions. The western world could have seized the accounts of all mercenaries engaged in Libya unless they withdrew immediately. The opposition could have laid down their arms.

What we do know is that the Libyan opposition is political. It is not representative of any ethnic divide. Therefore, neither the extent of violence nor the nature of the conflict allows any consideration of genocide in Libya. This is not a cause for war.

Principle: We will not act as the police force of the world.

This principle argues strongly against unilateral intervention. President Obama was right to seek international agreement and the consent of the United Nations Security Council. Unlike his predecessor he did not defy the United Nations and he did not build a coalition by bribery and coercion. As long as we remain within the mandate of the Security Council resolution we have the sanction of international law. The instant we go beyond that mandate we lose moral and legal grounding.

When the president states that his standard for success in Libya is the removal of Gaddafi from power, he signals that he is prepared to go beyond the mandate. He promises that we will not take the lead in this operation and we will not commit troops to yet another ground war in the region. This is the very definition of a mixed message. Reminiscent of the promises made by the Clinton administration in Kosovo (promises that were not kept), we have run headlong into a zone of duplicity where we can neither move forward nor backward. If in fact the bombing campaign is insufficient to remove the dictator from power, we will have placed ourselves in a dilemma: Escalate our involvement or admit that we have failed and placed the civilians we were charged to protect at even greater risk than before.

This is precisely why policies of intervention should not be left to impromptu actions. We cannot afford to be entangled in yet another civil war while our nation is facing a prolonged economic crisis, while our own people are suffering and while the other more pressing needs of the world and the nation are neglected.

We have neither the right nor the resources to act as the police force of the world.

Principle: We will practice a policy of restraint in civil wars and civil conflicts.

A careful consideration of this principle would have prevented our disastrous entanglements in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It would have precluded us from a protracted engagement in Kosovo with at best mixed results.

How does it apply in Libya? Is this a civil war or is it an unpopular dictator imposing his will through mercenary forces and arms supplied by many of the same powers now aligned against him?

I have said so before and I will say so again: There is no place in a civilized world for mercenary armies. The first lesson of this conflict like so many others is that we can no longer permit mercenary armies and weapons traders to act with no more restraint than the free market allows. Mercenaries should be banned outright. Weapons traders should operate under strict international guidelines. No civilized nation should be supplying arms to dictators, tyrants and kings who operate independent of the will of their people.

What do we expect to happen when the people rise up against despotic leaders, as they inevitably will?

It is not yet clear whether the conflict in Libya can best be defined as a civil war or a popular uprising. If it is a civil war or becomes one, our best policy is restraint. If it is a popular uprising, our justification for war remains uncertain.

I can only conclude that either the principles guiding the Obama administration are substantially different than my own or this was an emotion-charged response to a crisis situation. Like the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq, it appears to lack foresight. Like the ill-fated Supreme Court decision in 2000 that installed Bush in the White House, the administration may wish to discount precedent value but it cannot be done.

Are we prepared to act in kind when similar circumstances arise in other countries? How do we justify failure to act in Yemen, Bahrain, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else a popular uprising is suppressed by a non-democratic government?

Discounting the expansion of the Afghan War into Pakistan, the bombing of Libya was the first military intervention instigated by the Obama administration. What does it say about the Obama Doctrine of foreign policy?

It seems clear that the president is far less restrained in committing the force of arms than I can condone. The hope now is that events in Libya do not veer out of control as they have in Afghanistan and as they did in Iraq. The hope now is that the president will be able to keep his promise of a limited intervention.

Murphy’s Law holds that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. That is precisely why we should never engage in actions on the scale of war without a clear objective and an equally clear path to its fulfillment.

We are asking for trouble in Libya. We are asking for trouble with a policy that cannot be sustained elsewhere in the world. We are taking a gamble in an arena where the risks are far too great.

I genuinely hope the opposition seizes control in Libya and under the pressure of an international coalition fulfills the promise of a democratic government. If it does not and events spin out of control, entangling us in yet another quagmire of indefinite length, then this decision may well prove catastrophic.

For now we can only ask the president to remember his promise. The people do not want another war in a faraway land. We cannot afford it and we do not wish to sacrifice any more lives to foreign misadventures.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Remembering Joe: Grief and Recovery

2011-03-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

Subject: Two months ago
Date: Mar 24, 2011 7:47 AM

It is almost incomprehensible to me that Joe has been dead two months now. Up here in Santa Fe, alone in this empty house, I have had to confront my grief in ways I never did in the hustle and bustle of Albuquerque. Yesterday was the first day I got through without crying. Three tears while on the phone with my sister offering to send me the photos of Joe’s last birthday party, when I’m strong enough. I’m not strong enough yet but she’ll save them for me.

I do look forward to the Border Book Festival on April 8 and my plane flight out of the country on the 27th. Everything is new now, the van remodeled for one, new dishes, new cups, I just can’t look at the old stuff. I even bought new underwear. Most of the time I have spent up here crying and shopping.

I was invited into a women’s writers group in Santa Fe, we meet on Mondays. I sob as I read. Joe’s friend Mona came down from Taos, she has lost a son at 23, she and I both sobbed at the table at Whole Foods as we tried to eat our lunch. I cry when I get up, cry when I go to bed and try to fill the hours productively in between.

But I’m not asking for pity. Grief is simply work that must be done. I have had so much support from all of you. The pace will really pick up in April. I’ll go back to Las Cruces for April, got a place to stay. My van will be painted while I’m gone, so I am ecstatic about that. After three years of restoration this will be the final thing to do. When I get back from Mexico I see myself driving around the Southwest hitting all the open mics and selling Joe’s book out of the back of my van, just like so many others I have known.

I’ll get there, I will be happy again, I know it, Joe would want it for me. I believe I have dwelt too long on remembering him there at the last. I made some more chapbooks of poetry taken from the book and working on a project always makes me feel better. I get so much satisfaction from my artistic endeavors. I went to a bead shop and restrung my pearls. It’s a long necklace, then I added a giant cross to the pearls and now I look like a nun with a pearl rosary. All these images comfort me. I’ll get there.

Happy Trails

Beatlick Pamela

Editor's Note: Beatlick Joe Speer's book Backpack Trekker: A 60's Flashback is available at Amazon.com.

Buy American: Check the Can

2011-03-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

By Joan Stellrecht

Did y’all see that Diane Sawyer has a special report coming up this week. They removed ALL items from a typical, middle class family's home that were not made in the USA . There was hardly anything left besides the kitchen sink. Literally. During the special they are going to show truckloads of items - USA made - being brought in to replace everything and will be talking about how to find these items and the difference in price etc..

It was interesting that Diane said that if every American spent just $64 more than normal on USA made items this year, it would create something like 200,000 new jobs!

I WAS BUYING FOOD THE OTHER DAY AT WALMART and ON THE LABEL OF SOME PRODUCTS IT SAID 'FROM CHINA’

FOR EXAMPLE THE "OUR FAMILY" BRAND OF THE MANDARIN ORANGES SAYS RIGHT ON THE CAN 'FROM CHINA '

I WAS SHOCKED SO FOR A FEW MORE CENTS I BOUGHT THE LIBERTY GOLD BRAND OR THE DOLE SINCE IT'S FROM CALIF.

Are we Americans as dumb as we appear --- or --- is it that we just do not think while the Chinese, knowingly and intentionally, export inferior and even toxic products and dangerous toys and goods to be sold in American markets?

70% of Americans believe that the trading privileges afforded to the Chinese should be suspended.

Why do you need the government to suspend trading privileges? DO IT YOURSELF, AMERICA!!

Simply look on the bottom of every product you buy, and if it says 'Made in China ' or 'PRC' (and that now includes Hong Kong ), simply choose another product, or none at all. You will be amazed at how dependent you are on Chinese products, and you will be equally amazed at what you can do without.

Who needs plastic eggs to celebrate Easter? If you must have eggs, use real ones and benefit some American farmer. Easter is just an example. The point is do not wait for the government to act. Just go ahead and assume control on your own.

THINK ABOUT THIS: If 200 million Americans refuse to buy just $20 each of Chinese goods, that's a billion dollar trade imbalance resolved in our favor...fast!!

Most of the people who have been reading about this matter are planning on implementing this on March. 4th and continue it until April 4th. That is only one month of trading losses, but it will hit the Chinese for 1/12th of the total, or 8%, of their American exports. Then they might have to ask themselves if the benefits of their arrogance and lawlessness were worth it.

Remember, March 4th to April 4th

START NOW.

Send this to everybody you know. Let's show them that we are Americans and NOBODY can take us for granted.

If we can't live without cheap Chinese goods for one month out of our lives, WE DESERVE WHAT WE GET!

Pass it on, America.

THE JACK RANDOM PROBLEM

2011-02-05T11:06:00.000-08:00

I am Jack Random.

I published my first short story under the name of Jack Random in 1997. I have since published several stories, a novel and hundreds if not thousands of commentaries or works of fiction under the name of Jack Random on the worldwide web. I believe I have some measure of ownership of that name and feel responsible for the words associated with it.

Much to my amazement I have learned that there are characters by the name of Jack Random in at least two works of fiction, including the Deathstalker series by British SciFi writer Simon Green and the obscure 1918 movie Somebody’s Widow. There are to my knowledge, however, no writers by the name of Jack Random predating my work in 1997.

In recent years I have become aware of a proliferation of individuals operating under the name of Jack Random. Most of them I can abide but some I would like to distance myself from, the most recent being a Facebook edition of Mr. Random. There is also a Yahoo Jack Random and a MySpace Jack Random.

On this occasion I would like to point out that they are not me and I am not associated with their words or music or thoughts in any way.

I am the jazzman Jack Random, author of Dark Underground, Ghost Dance Insurrection, The Killing Spirit, Hard Times, and the Jazzman Chronicles as well as many other works of fiction.

I am a progressive independent and believe strongly in tolerance. If any writer or personality expresses thoughts contrary to that philosophy they are not me. Anyone who rants from the right is not worthy of the name.

Jazz.

BEATLICK JOE: The Last Goodbye.

2011-01-29T11:51:00.000-08:00

When you come of a certain age as I have, death becomes a part of life. No longer an abstraction, a mystery of time and space, but a reality of everyday life. We grow numb to death as a means of survival.

But every so often death moves too close. It taps our shoulder and inhabits our conscious lives. The death of a child, whose innocence offends our sense of justice, or a promising youth who never reached fulfillment, or the death of a brethren spirit, someone who exemplified the kind of person we always admired and strove to be.

Beatlick Joe Speer has waved his last goodbye on this journey through life on the planet earth. He has gone to a place where only memories and spiritual messaging can reach him. He was an artist in the purest sense, a master carpenter in the medium of words, a fellow traveler in search of wisdom and inspiration and possessing more than his share of both. Along with his longtime wife and partner, Beatlick Pamela Hirst, he cultivated art and artists, provided a forum for voices longing to be heard, and transformed the world he encountered into a more interesting and better place.

It was my pleasure to share the stage in a recorded production of perhaps my most inspired and least understood work: Dark Underground. I can still hear his Ornette Coleman riffs, rising, falling, punctuated pauses and elongated phonemes, hammering a beat only he could feel. Not only words, which he possessed in abundance, but a master of sound as well.

No one will ever take the place of Beatlick Joe Speer. He leaves behind friends, family, a legacy of prose and poetry, and his masterwork: Backpack Trekker: A Sixties Flashback. It is a work that stakes a place in history, literature, sociology and psychology. It is an exploration of the soul of an artist and stands alone as a chronicle of both the sixties and human evolution. It is a work that will live forever.

“Books are like angels that move between the living and the dead.” Joe Speer.

Adios, my friend, you will be missed.

See you on the next run.

Jazz.

Beatlicks: Fighting off Death

2011-01-22T15:40:00.000-08:00

I fought off death last night‏

Actually night before last. I suppose this was an hallucination. I have been working on editing Joe's book proof, setting up his new facebook page and reediting the website with the latest newsletter. I was working on the website all day and night and was shocked to see it was almost three o'clock in the morning. I went to bed. As I lay in bed, very sad and crying, I looked up in the dark at the ceiling. There was a faint glimmer of light. I began to see spinning and whirling entities fill the top of the room. Everything was rotating, smoky like giant white moths. These little whirls began to come towards me and Joe. I had no doubt that this was death, horrible furries, swirling around and trying to suck up Joe's soul. Evil horrible things. I stared at them and they flew close to my face taunting me, but I just kept my eyes wide open challenging them and leaned over Joe as he lay in the bed so they couldn't get at him. This went on for quite a few minutes. Finally they began to come together up in the ceiling and reshape into something more like clouds. It seemed I had been able to repel them but they were not leaving by any means.

I thought to myself this is working but I don't know how long I can keep my eyes wide open like this for the whole night. And then I realized they would never tolerate the light. So I merely got out of bed and turned on the light. Problem solved. But I tell you with ever fiber of my heart I believe I fought off death last night as it came to take Joe.

The next day new medication to help his nausea worked and he was able to eat just a little bit but at least something. He has been literally starving to death for two weeks. So I can get some food in him, he has rallied enough to sit in on the editing sessions and I do believe he will make it to The Source on Thursday here in Albuquerque for a little tribute celebration in his honor. It's at 1111 Carlisle SE here in Albuquerque.

This is the only good thing that has happened in such a long time. Joe won't have long for this world, but at least I hope he will live to hold the final edition of his book. The editing is going on fast and furious, six of us at a time sitting around the table editing the proofs.

Love and peace
Beatlick Pamela

Realist Re: The Clinton Pivot

2011-01-03T17:17:00.000-08:00

Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 08:41:20 -0800
From: writerealist@earthlink.net

I have to begin with praise for this article, for it is the best rebuttal to those who defend Obama's sorry performance that I have yet seen. I do not, however, place all of the blame for his disaster upon him.

As the nominal leader of his party, Obama certainly deserves denunciation. But there was another -Harry Reid- who could have done much to alter the present outcome of the 111th Congress. Many times he telegraphed the strategy of the Democratic caucus, as if to provide early warning to their opponents on how to prepare a counterattack. He also didn't enforce party discipline as well as the Republicans did, or the Blue Dogs like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln couldn't have held so much control in their corporatist hands. I'm glad we don't have Sharron Angle to deal with, but I sure wish Reid had gone down to defeat. I feel he should be challenged for the Majority Leader spot in the 112th Congress.

In contrast, Nancy Pelosi -who received far more abuse from the right-wingers than Reid did- managed to keep a fractious House under control and produced 400 bills that never saw the light of the Senatorial day. She is the exception to the inept Democratic leadership of the 111th Congress period. Had Obama and Reid done their jobs, life would be so much better in America today.

In your comment thread on Dissident Voice, you are attacked for promoting Hillary as being no different from Bill. Frankly, I have to agree, but not for the reasons presented. I expect that Hillary -having served as a corporate lawyer as Bill did not- is even more in tune with the corporatist coup going on today. She shares its roots in her own life, only becoming liberalized in college. I believe that she would have been worse than Bill or Obama. Her Senate record supporting the Iraq War when her constituents opposed it is alone a sufficient difference to promote in your defense. It certainly convinced me that she was not the horse to back in the race.

Moving back to Obama, once he had defeated Hillary for the nomination, his dramatic rightward shift should have been a siren in the night for Democrats. As your Dissident Voice commenter Max Shields said on December 14th, 2010 at 5:16pm, "I could not bare (sic) to vote for the man; he was just far too transparent." I have to agree with this assessment (I could not bring myself to vote for him either), and yet too many Democrats did not seem to notice.

The simple conclusion is that collectively we were fooled. The next issue we face is how to avoid being fooled again.

As I see it, somehow we have to convince the Democratic Party leadership that Obama cannot run again in 2012. One would think that the midterm avalanche would awaken them, but I see no sign of any awareness. I don't see that we are going to have much time to alter the nation's course if the next election goes corporatist. 2012 could be our last chance. So we have to make the best of what we have and look ahead to plan what to do, and to stop looking back for things to happen that might never have happened anyway. It's down to our own welfare. We have to look out for ourselves now. If somehow we win, then we can take care of our friends. we can help no one if we don't help ourselves. and the first thing we need to do is change the Democratic Party if we can. Otherwise, we might as well get used to corporate rule.

Realist
http://blogcritics.org/writers/realist

PS: Best wishes to Joe Speer for a speedy recovery.

Reader response: The Clinton Pivot

2011-01-03T15:33:00.000-08:00

Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 09:03:23 -0600
Subject: Thanks for "The Clinton Pivot: Obama Sells the Farm" and...

...what can we do to get out of the mess we are in now? Population in 1910 was 1.9 billion people on earth and now it is around 7 billion in 2011. Which resources will we run out of first which will cause the civilizations currently existing to implode? Help!!! Is anyone listening, that is, enough of us to affect the change we need or are people going willingly to their death, not having heard of Alan Harrington's "The Immortalist" and Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children ideas. Oh well, where is the nearest cave. This summer I will gather wood for the winter...just in case.

KHB, Platteville area, WI, USA

Prayers for Beatlick Joe

2010-12-11T13:52:00.000-08:00

[Editor Note: Those of you who have from time to time checked the contents of this web log are familiar with the adventures of the Beatlicks (Joe Speer & Pamela Hirst). Along with my friend wZ they are artists of the first order (art for art's sake) and members of a vanishing tribe: The Troubadours. I recently learned (see below) that on their latest adventure Beatlick Joe was diagnosed with cancer. At last word they were in Texas on their way back to New Mexico from Florida. Our prayers go out to them both. They are one of a kind. I will always remember my days in Nashville where the Beatlicks were King and Queen of the poetry scene. It was my pleasure to stand beside him in a recorded production of my radio play: Darc Underground. Joe would begin his usual readings with "Page#..." from his work in progress. What followed was a day in the life, an anecdote, or a recounting of literature and history, and was always compelling. In my various encounters with him, I would always ask him if he finished the book, perhaps knowing that he had no intention of doing so. Now, as the sunset may be nearing, it may be time to finish it up and post it as a legacy to a singular life worth living. A blessing on you both. You will have a lasting place in the hearts, minds and souls of all you have touched. Peace.]

From: Pamela Hirst
Subject: Pray for Beatlick Joe
Date: Nov 19, 2010 3:47 PM

As most of you know Beatlick Joe and I have been traveling cross country visiting old haunts. He has been having some indistinct pains on his left side and when his leg swelled up alarmingly this morning I took him to an emergency room in Panama City, or near there.

Joe has deep vein thrombosis, blood clots in his lungs and legs, and lesions on his liver. He also has a mass on his pancreas about half the size of my thumb. He was hospitalized and will be given blood thinners in the morning. We will see a cancer specialist on Monday.

Joe has insurance in New Mexico. We have to get back as quickly as possible but Joe will not be able to sit for long stretches at a time so it will take some time. I will be injecting him with blood thinners once a day.

He does have insurance in New Mexico, thank god.

We will have to find some kind of affordable housing in Las Cruces. We have to find a cancer doctor to decide whether to cut out the growth on his pancreas or use radiation. I have asked his doctor in Las Cruces to recommend a cancer doctor, I think they are called oncologists.

In Las Cruces we will have to find a cancer doctor who will decide whether to treat the mass in his pancreas with radiation or surgery.

If you know others who have gone through this, hopefully successfully, please let me know, suggest some websites for me.

Pray pray

Beatlick Pamela

The Giants Win the Series!

2010-11-20T12:03:00.000-08:00

By Jack Random

Prosperity for the prosperous
Austerity for the poor

Less for those with the least
For those with the most more

College for the rich
War for the poor

Fortunes for the fortunate
Debt for the working stiffs
Bailouts for the bankers
Foreclosures for the dreamers
Bonuses for the corporate masters
Bankruptcy for the shopkeepers

The wars drone on in silence
The warriors and wounded cast aside
Pick up the pieces and get in line
There's enough bread for all

Global meltdown nuclear winter...

Who cares?

The Giants won the Series!

Peace,
Random

Hunter S. Thompson: Ignorance & Morality

2010-11-11T12:12:00.000-08:00

RE: HUNTER S THOMPSON

BY JAKE BERRY

An except from an email to my brother Jon regarding Hunter Thompson and morality:

Thanks for the latest HST info. I know about Steadman's book, but I didn't know about Breakfast with Hunter. I think you're right on target about him. He was not only a visionary in his approach to the art, an innovator in it's practice, but also he was at heart a moralist. Many, even the elite and literati, refuse to acknowledge this because to do so would be to cede ground to someone that was definitely not one of them. It would also expose their hypocrisy. Western culture, the U.S. especially, is incredibly puritanical and doctrinaire. They talk about freedom and liberal democracy and thump their chests while they spout their "values" just like fundamentalists thump their Bibles or Korans. They make more interesting conversation and are less likely to justify their violence in the name of God, but they're just as narrow minded, intolerant and dangerous. Hunter saw straight through all kinds of hypocrisy because it was so alien to him. When he lied he lied straight in your face, did it well and laughed at you when you fell for it. He was aware that he was lying and knew the advantages of a well made lie over a steaming pile of facts that pass for truth. He gets knocked from all sides for his drug abuse, but look at the people who are criticizing him. How many of them are or are long dead as a result of bad diet and / or officially sanctioned drug abuse (i.e. their doctor was their pusher). Like all puritans they hide anything that doesn't conform to the doctrine. Hunter called their bluff. He openly confessed and enjoyed his sins. In other words he admitted to being a flawed human, just like every other human and made it an integral part of his work. So with HST you get the full creature, not the primed and coifed human ready for his or her moment - playing out the charade of progressivism. We make progress in technology. That makes sense. You keep trying to improve your tools for more efficiency, a quicker route to a better result. But we're just plain lying to ourselves if we think we've made moral progress. We've just learned how to hide the beast behind a cloak of civility. We have that leisure because we're at the top of the heap. Most humans have to get what they can get any way they can get it or die. Those are the people we hire to do the dirty work of keeping the gears turning. They take the risks and we buy the product of that risk. The only difference between cold blooded murder and murder by proxy is that the latter doesn't have to hide the corpse and clean the blood out of his clothes. We're all guilty of almost every form of atrocity - even if we don't know we're doing it. Ignorance is no excuse. Hunter refused to be ignorant, but he didn't go soft either. He knew that survival for one often meant death for another, freedom for a few meant slavery for most. That's why people like him and William Burroughs will remain relevant long after the majority of the pulitzer prize winner class have become quaint curiosities.

We do what we must to survive. If we can be kind enough to treat one another the way we want to be treated we're far ahead of the devouring pack. That's the most you can expect from humans and that's the most any truly wise human and / or savior ever asked of us. We all fail even to reach that low mark, but the least we can do is admit it and keep trying. Things like religion, politics and what we consume are mere side effects of what is actually happening. Why get tangled up in the side show when you can walk right into the full light of reality and drink your fill - and then some?

Election Day 2010 (A Voter's Guide)

2010-11-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

By Jake Berry

Choose a thick cut -  

preferably a fat ham.  

Drill a small hole through it.  

Insert a spark plug into the wound. 

Wrap a live wire around its tip.  

Insert a tube

into the opposite end of the wound.

Pour gasoline down the tube.  

Observe how the flesh leaps. 

Keep the gasoline coming.

The flesh is twitching now,

moving across the floor.

Call it a meat engine.

Clothe the entire apparatus

in a large flag.

Toss it out into the yard.

Keep the gasoline coming.

When it rains

observe how the convulsions surrender

and reignite

and thick smoke rises.

 Inhale the stench.  

Keep the gasoline coming.

Arundhati Roy: Oppressing Dissent

2010-11-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

In an update of events in India regarding Arundhati Roy, the author relates that while the charges of sedition have been dropped, the attempt to oppress her dissenting view continues with the media... (courtesy of Z Net).

Statement on Media and Mobs

By Arundhati Roy

Monday, November 01, 2010

New Delhi, October 31: A mob of about a hundred people arrived at my house at 11 this morning (Sunday October 31st 2010.) They broke through the gate and vandalized property. They shouted slogans against me for my views on Kashmir, and threatened to teach me a lesson.

The OB Vans of NDTV, Times Now and News 24 were already in place ostensibly to cover the event live. TV reports say that the mob consisted largely of members of the BJP’s Mahila Morcha (Women’s wing).

After they left, the police advised us to let them know if in future we saw any OB vans hanging around the neighborhood because they said that was an indication that a mob was on its way. In June this year, after a false report in the papers by Press Trust of India (PTI) two men on motorcycles tried to stone the windows of my home. They too were accompanied by TV cameramen.

What is the nature of the agreement between these sections of the media and mobs and criminals in search of spectacle? Does the media which positions itself at the ‘scene’ in advance have a guarantee that the attacks and demonstrations will be non-violent? What happens if there is criminal trespass (as there was today) or even something worse? Does the media then become accessory to the crime?

This question is important, given that some TV channels and newspapers are in the process of brazenly inciting mob anger against me.

In the race for sensationalism the line between reporting news and manufacturing news is becoming blurred. So what if a few people have to be sacrificed at the altar of TRP ratings?

The Government has indicated that it does not intend to go ahead with the charges of sedition against me and the other speakers at a recent seminar on Azadi for Kashmir. So the task of punishing me for my views seems to have been taken on by right wing storm troopers.

The Bajrang Dal and the RSS have openly announced that they are going to “fix” me with all the means at their disposal including filing cases against me all over the country. The whole country has seen what they are capable of doing, the extent to which they are capable of going.

So, while the Government is showing a degree of maturity, are sections of the media and the infrastructure of democracy being rented out to those who believe in mob justice?

I can understand that the BJP's Mahila Morcha is using me to distract attention from the senior RSS activist Indresh Kumar who has recently been named in the CBI charge-sheet for the bomb blast in Ajmer Sharif in which several people were killed and many injured.

But why are sections of the mainstream media doing the same?

Is a writer with unpopular views more dangerous than a suspect in a bomb blast? Or is it a question of ideological alignment?

Arundhati Roy

October 31st 2010

Pity the Nation that Jails Dissent

2010-10-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

As we wrestle with the issues of an election in America, the world continues to remind us that we are fortunate to live in a nation that allows dissent. One of the world's great political writers and novelists is currently threatened by the oppressive sedition laws of her nation. Here is her statement (courtesy of Z Net):

I Pity The Nation That Needs To Jail Those Who Ask For Justice

By Arundhati Roy

Wednesday, October 26, 2010

I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning's papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.

Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer's husband and Asiya's brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get 'insaf'—justice—from India, and now believed that Azadi—freedom— was their only hope. I met young stone pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.

In the papers some have accused me of giving 'hate-speeches', of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.

Arundhati Roy
October 26 2010

RANDOM GUIDE TO THE CALIFORNIA ELECTION

2010-10-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

This is intended as a general guide to voting in the upcoming California election for like-minded progressive independents. The further right you are on the political spectrum the more you should consider this a guide on how not to vote.

STATEWIDE OFFICES:

GOVERNOR: Jerry Brown, Democrat.

Is this the year of the CEO? I think not. We are less than two years removed from the Wall Street meltdown that nearly landed the nation in a second Great Depression. Make no mistake: The politics of Meg Whitman and her wealthy Wall Street cohorts are what landed us in this protracted recession. I think it generous of Whitman to boost California’s economy by spending a large chunk of her fortune to become Governor but the jobs she’s created will disappear in a few weeks and the only jobs she’s likely to create if elected will be in China, India or anywhere that labor is cheap.

The sky will not fall if Whitman is elected because she’s unlikely to get anything passed in the California legislature but why should we reward the arrogance of a candidate who never voted in her adult life yet believes she can buy the governor’s palace?

Jerry Brown is not the same man who was christened Moonbeam back in the day. He’s a hardnosed pragmatist and may be just the man to lead us out of the deep hole we’re in.

SENATOR: Barbara Boxer, Democrat.

Is this the year of the CEO? I think not. Carly Fiorina is the poster candidate of corporate America: Tax breaks for the elite, cheap labor, union busting, free trade, job exportation, de-regulation and corporate rule. She represents everything that is wrong with government in America and she has the audacity to call Barbara Boxer arrogant. That’s the pot calling the kettle black.

Boxer may not be the most dynamic Senator in Washington but she stands with the working people most of the time. She will vote to end our involvement in both wars and will push hard for the kinds of jobs California needs most: Rebuilding our infrastructure and laying the groundwork for an emerging Green Economy.

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: Weber, King or Castillo.

This is an office without power or authority. It is a stepping stone for politicians seeking to further their careers and an opportunity to prove they can win a statewide election. I see no compelling reason to vote for either major party candidate. This is an opportunity for the voter to assert his or her independence without fear of the consequences. Vote Peace and Freedom, Libertarian or Green. Who cares?

SECRETARY OF STATE: Tobin or Menasche.

As we have seen in the states of Ohio and Florida, there are times when a Secretary of State can wield enormous power. This office should be nonpartisan and the best we can do in this election is a civil rights attorney (Menasche) from the Green Party or a voting rights advocate (Tobin) from the Libertarians.

ATTORNEY GENERAL: Kamala Harris, Democrat.

In an increasingly important role, setting law enforcement priorities with dwindling resources, we can be reasonably certain Harris will bring a progressive view to the state attorney general’s office. She has done well in San Francisco.

CONTROLLER: John Chiang, Democrat.

There are times when we should support an incumbent for a job done well. It appears that this is the case with John Chiang. In these hard times he has saved taxpayers millions of dollars by exposing fraud and misappropriation of funds. Bravo!

TREASURER/INSURANCE COMMISSIONER/BOARD OF EQUALIZATION: Go Independent. As a rule of thumb, unless you have a compelling reason to vote mainstream, vote independent.

UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE: Democrat.

The balance of power in the US Congress is at stake in this election. It is a shame independents have not found the candidates or resources to make a run in this election. In my district there are no independent alternatives. With the Supreme Court’s ruling on corporate funding of campaigns (Citizens United) it can only get worse. Nevertheless, hold your nose and vote for these feckless Democrats. There are bigger issues at stake than the individual candidates represent.

STATE SENATOR AND ASSEMBLY: Independent. It is unlikely the Republicans will take control of the state assembly or senate. The voter should therefore feel free to vote for the independent or third party candidate of your preference. If however there is no independent alternative on the ballot, hold your nose and vote Democrat.

PROPOSITION 19: Legalization of Marijuana.

Yes. Take away the morality play (one group seeking to impose their morality on their fellow citizens) and the arguments against legalization have no bite. The same folks who said the sky would fall with medical marijuana swear that it is a gateway drug. No, it is not but alcohol is. One paper claims it is poorly written because it doesn’t spell out the details but that is exactly how it should be written. End prohibition and figure out the details as we go along. One study says it won’t shut down the cartels but it certainly won’t do them any good, will it? It is no secret that the fiercest opponents of 19 are the drug dealers. Another says it won’t raise nearly as much money as we might think. Maybe so but it will open a vast revenue stream while freeing our law enforcement officers to address more pressing issues of law and order. But the feds won’t honor it. Really? Do they have nothing better to do than to bust people growing, selling and distributing relatively small amounts of marijuana that would otherwise come from more nefarious sources? Do they intend to go after everyone or have they never heard of discriminatory law enforcement? Like medical marijuana, let California lead and the nation will eventually follow.

PROPOSITION 20: Redistricting.

Yes. Anything would be better than partisan gerrymandering. Who knows if the 14-member commission will truly be independent but lets give it a chance.

PROPOSITION 21: Vehicle fee for state parks.

Yes. As a result of Proposition 13, the single most potent reason for California’s perpetual budget shortfall, the state can no longer raise revenues through tax increase. Therefore, California’s legislators have turned to fees to escape the two-thirds vote required for taxes. State parks desperately need funds and this provides them. Too bad its prospects are so dismal.

PROPOSITION 22: Protects State Funds for Transportation, Redevelopment and Local Government Projects.

No. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul is another way the state has adapted to its financial restraints. If you think these particular expenditures are more important than education, fire and police then vote yes. I don’t.

PROPOSITION 23: Repeal of the Green Initiative.

No. Two Texas oil companies have conspired to undo California’s Green initiative, a critical incentive to the development of a new economy. This is far and away the most important proposition on the ballot. Say No to Texas and Yes to Green.

PROPOSITION 24: Repeal of a Corporate Tax Exemption.

Yes. The corporate elite managed to get tax exemptions in the last budget compromise. Almost all of the tax breaks would go to the largest corporations while the state in all its need would sacrifice billions in lost revenues.

PROPOSITION 25: Majority Rule on Budget Passage.

Yes. The two-thirds vote is the primary weapon of all “Don’t Tax Us!” interests and it is grossly anti-democratic. It’s too bad this proposal doesn’t target the two-thirds requirement on tax increases as well but you take what you can get.

PROPOSITION 26: Two-thirds Vote for Fees.

No. If you don’t believe in majority rule you don’t believe in democracy. Allowing a majority in one election to require two-thirds in perpetuity is irresponsible, immoral and it is one major reason for the decline of the great state of California.

PROPOSITION 27: Repeals Districting Commission (Proposition 20).

No. With 20 and 27 on the ballot it is possible to create a commission and eliminate with one vote. Go figure.

VOTE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND, 7 AM TO 8 PM.

SUMMARY

GOVERNOR: BROWN
US SENATOR: BOXER
LT. GOVERNOR: CASTILLO
CONTROLLER: CHIANG
ATTORNEY GENERAL: HARRIS
SECRETARY OF STATE: MENASCHE
TREASURER: CRITTENDEN
INSURANCE COMISH: PADILLA
BD OF EQUALIZATION: MICHLIN

US REPRESENTATIVE: DEMOCRAT
STATE SENATOR: INDEPENDENT
STATE ASSEMBLY: INDEPENDENT

PROPOSITION 19: YES
PROPOSITION 20: YES
PROPOSITION 21: YES
PROPOSITION 22: NO
PROPOSITION 23: NO
PROPOSITION 24: YES
PROPOSITION 25: YES
PROPOSITION 26: NO
PROPOSITION 27: NO

Jake's Word: In Response to "The Long View of American History" by Jack Random.

2010-10-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

In response to "The Long View of American History: The Fall before the Rise" by Jack Random (reprinted below).

"But we do know that the laws of economics will not be suspended by public sentiment."

Yes! Why does the public not understand this? Do we have to be reduced to a third world economic structure before people realize they've been had?

It does seem that real change can only be realized in the wake of great catastrophe - usually catastrophes that could have been avoided. Is rationality so alien to the majority of humans most of the time?

To add to the confusion, the 10:10 campaign releases a video in which people that disagree with them are blown up. This was supposed to be funny. It isn't. When the the result was overwhelmingly negative, they pulled the video, but too late. It has gone viral. Is this really the work of an environmental group concerned about the future, or right-wing propaganda out of left field?

Obviously the polemic is out of control from all sides. Before the U.S. presidential election of 2004 people were asking if a nation of people could collectively lose their minds. It seems that they can. Germany in the 1930s leaps to mind. Worse yet, the problem has gone global as corporatism, under the name of austerity campaigns, deprives people of the services their taxes pay for while the rich get tax breaks and corporations are allowed to do as they please beyond any real legal restraint.

Does it all have to fall apart before we wake up? I hope not. Waking up in a new dark ages would be like waking up in a cave. How many centuries, how many generations, would have to pass before we recovered?

Sadly, no matter what we say, or how we vote, and I will be voting, it seems to be out of our hands.

Take care,
Jake

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

THE LONG VIEW OF AMERICAN HISTORY: THE FALL BEFORE THE RISE

By Jack Random

It seems to me that anyone who has a vision of real and systemic change in government must inevitably come to terms with the reality that change is a long-term proposition. It is improbable that we are the change we’ve been looking for or that the change we seek will come in our lifetimes.

Historic change requires a convergence of events far beyond our collective ability to control or create it.

History instructs us that change often requires a catalyst in the form of a catastrophe, a disaster or a tragedy so profound it touches the heart and invades the psyche of every man, woman and child who bears witness.

At a time when news was carried primarily by word of mouth from tavern to tavern, from church to public hall, on the wings of an emerging independent press, the Boston Massacre was such an event. Analogous in some ways to Kent State and Jackson State in 1970 it was widely perceived as the first occasion where those charged with protecting us, turned on us and killed our fellow beings for merely asserting their rights of citizenship. It struck a deep chord with the American colonists and propelled us forward toward the war for independence.

The great upheaval of the Civil War ended the scourge of state sanctioned slavery in America.

The Great Depression of the 1930’s combined with the rise of unions and the rights of the working class gave rise to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, ending forever this nation’s philosophic indifference to the poor, the infirm and the elderly under the guise of “rugged individualism.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 hurled us into global politics and the great upheaval of World War II. It unleashed America’s industrial might (now all but vanished) and eventually altered the balance of powers, setting the stage for over four decades of the Cold War.

The change from cataclysmic events is not always positive. In our own lifetimes we experienced such an event with the attack on the towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and an unknown third target. It precipitated a policy of aggressive war and a bold attempt by a brash and all too eager administration to dominate the world by capturing its key supply of oil. We can only imagine how many lives and how much damage to the economy, to civil liberties and to the nation’s reputation in world politics resulted from the Neocon reign of terror.

We have not even begun to glimpse the end of the costs attributable to the Bush administration and foreign policy is only half the story. We very nearly experienced a second cataclysmic event during our lifetime and it came to fruition only seven years after the September 11 attack.

As a direct result of the Bush administration policies (an overextended military, a burgeoning debt, tax cuts favoring the wealthy, deregulation, job exportation, on and on), an out of control financial system pushed us to the brink of global economic collapse.

Owing largely to a massive injection of capital from the public coffers to the private sector we narrowly escaped the cataclysm of an implosion that would surely have led to a second Great Depression. We were left with the lingering effects of a great recession: long-term unemployment, depressed wages, diminished home values, depreciating benefits and an ever-increasing gap between the elite and the working class. But we were spared the cataclysm that would have triggered systemic change.

As one who believes in change, who believes that the democratic form of government requires constant change to curtail the growing power of international corporations, I am reluctant to conclude that total economic collapse might have been the better long-term option but that is the possibility that now presents itself.

For it appears that we as a people have learned little to nothing of the hard lessons delivered by a near collapse. Indeed, those who seem to dominate our political discourse today either refuse to believe it happened or refuse to connect the dots between the economic pain we are currently suffering and the policies that created it.

As we continue down this path of blind denial it seems probable that we will soon elect a sufficient number of unknowing, irresponsible, corporate sponsored politicians, so blind to our economic realities that they will paralyze government indefinitely.

We are asking for trouble.

We will continue marching like lemmings to the sea toward the next economic breakdown only this time congress will be sworn against a government bailout and the chief executive will be disinclined to ask.

There will be no comfort in being among those who warned the general public of pending disaster.

Will there be another Great Depression? No one knows. But we do know that the laws of economics will not be suspended by public sentiment.

We are living in times when historical events are accelerating and the government’s ability to keep pace is dramatically diminished. With the power of corporations growing like the weeds of an untended garden it is hardly the time to rip the heart out of the only counterforce that can hold it in check.

In the long term, perhaps a second Great Depression is inevitable and maybe it is needed to deliver the lessons that should have been learned from lesser disasters.

If this is our destiny, it is my hope that like the Phoenix we will rise from the ruins greater, wiser, more democratic and more humane.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

THE GREAT CON OF THE FINANCIAL ELITE

2010-08-06T11:41:00.000-07:00

The Financial Con of the Decade Explained So Simply Even A Congressman Will Get It
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/financial-con-decade-explained-so-simply-even-congressman-will-get-it

(Submitted by Tyler Durden 7/10/10. Forwarded by DakotaNomad 8/6/10.)

Sometimes, when chasing the bouncing ball of fraud and corruption on a daily basis, it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the millions of trees.

Luckily, Charles Hugh Smith of oftwominds.com has taken the time to put it all into such simple and compelling terms even [a] corrupt congressmen will not have the chance to plead stupidity after reading this.

Of course, to those familiar with the work of Austrian economists, none of this will come as a surprise.

1. Enable trillions of dollars in mortgages guaranteed to default by packaging unlimited quantities of them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), creating unlimited demand for fraudulently originated loans.

2. Sell these MBS as "safe" to credulous investors, institutions, town councils in Norway, etc., i.e. "the bezzle" on a global scale.

3. Make huge "side bets" against these doomed mortgages so when they default then the short-side bets generate billions in profits.

4. Leverage each $1 of actual capital into $100 of high-risk bets.

5. Hide the utterly fraudulent bets offshore and/or off-balance sheet (not that the regulators you had muzzled would have noticed anyway).

6. When the long-side bets go bad, transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal guarantees, bailouts and backstops into the private hands which made the risky bets, either via direct payments or via proxies like AIG. Enable these private Power Elites to borrow hundreds of billions more from the Treasury/Fed at zero interest.

7. Deposit these funds at the Federal Reserve, where they earn 3-4%. Reap billions in guaranteed income by borrowing Federal money for free and getting paid interest by the Fed.

8. As profits pile up, start buying boatloads of short-term U.S. Treasuries. Now the taxpayers who absorbed the trillions in private losses and who transferred trillions in subsidies, backstops, guarantees, bailouts and loans to private banks and corporations, are now paying interest on the Treasuries their own money purchased for the banks/corporations.

9. Slowly acquire trillions of dollars in Treasuries--not difficult to do as the Federal government is borrowing $1.5 trillion a year.

10. Stop buying Treasuries and dump a boatload onto the market, forcing interest rates to rise as supply of new T-Bills exceeds demand (at least temporarily). Repeat as necessary to double and then triple interest rates paid on Treasuries.

11. Buy hundreds of billions in long-term Treasuries at high rates of interest. As interest rates rise, interest payments dwarf all other Federal spending, forcing extreme cuts in all other government spending.

12. Enjoy the hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments being paid by taxpayers on Treasuries that were purchased with their money but which are safely in private hands.

Since the Federal government could potentially inflate away these trillions in Treasuries, buy enough elected officials to force austerity so inflation remains tame. In essence, these private banks and corporations now own the revenue stream of the Federal government and its taxpayers. Neat con, and the marks will never understand how "saving our financial system" led to their servitude to the very interests they bailed out.

The circle is now complete: in "saving our financial system," the public borrowed trillions and transferred the money to private Power Elites, who then buy the public debt with the money swindled out of the taxpayer. Then the taxpayers transfer more wealth every year to the Power Elites/Plutocracy in the form of interest on the Treasury debt. The Power Elites will own the debt that was taken on to bail them out of bad private bets: this is the culmination of privatized gains, socialized risk.

In effect, it's a Third World/colonial scam on a gigantic scale: plunder the public treasury, then buy the debt which was borrowed and transferred to your pockets. You are buying the country with money you borrowed from its taxpayers. No despot could do better.
As for part two of this epic con we are all living through:

The Con of the Decade (Part II) meshes neatly with the first Con of the Decade. Yesterday I described how the financial Plutocracy can transfer ownership of the Federal government's income stream via using the taxpayer's money to buy the debt that the taxpayers borrowed to bail out the Plutocracy.

In order for the con to work, however, the Power Elites and their politico toadies in Congress, the Treasury and the Fed must convince the peasantry that low tax rates on unearned income are not just "free market capitalism at its best" but that they are also "what the country needs to get moving again."

The first step of the con was successfully fobbed off on the peasantry in 2001: lower the taxes paid by the most productive peasants marginally while massively lowering the effective taxes paid by the financial Plutocracy.

One Year Later, No Sign of Improvement in America's Income Inequality Problem:
Income inequality has grown massively since 2000. According to Harvard Magazine, 66% of 2001-2007's income growth went to the top 1% of Americans, while the other 99% of the population got a measly 6% increase. How is this possible? One thing to consider is that in 2001, George W. Bush cut $1.3 trillion in taxes, and 32.6% of the cut went to the top 1%. Another factor is Bush's decision to increase the national debt from $5 trillion to $11 trillion. The combination of increased government spending and lower taxes helped the top 1% considerably.
The second part of the con is to mask much of the Power Elites' income streams behind tax shelters and other gaming-of-the-system so the advertised rate appears high to the peasantry but the effective rate paid on total income is much much lower.

The tax shelters are so numerous and so effective that it takes thousands of pages of tax codes and armies of toadies to pursue them all: family trusts, oil depletion allowances, tax-free bonds and of course special one-off tax breaks arranged by "captured" elected officials.

Step three is to convince the peasantry that $600 in unearned income (capital gains) should be taxed in the same way as $600 million. The entire key to the U.S. tax code is to tax earned income heavily but tax unearned income (the majority of the Plutocracy's income is of course unearned) not at all or very lightly.

In a system which rewarded productive work and provided disincentives to rampant speculation and fraud, the opposite would hold: unearned income would be taxed at much higher rates than earned income, which would be taxed lightly, especially at household incomes below $100,000.

If the goal were to encourage "investing" while reining in the sort of speculations which "earn" hedge fund managers $600 million each (no typo, that was the average of the top 10 hedgies' personal take of their funds gains), then all unearned income (interest, dividends, capital gains, rents from property, oil wells, etc.) up to $6,000 a year would be free--no tax. Unearned income between $6,000 and $60,000 would be taxed at 20%, roughly half the top rate for earned income. This would leave 95% of U.S. households properly encouraged to invest via low tax rates.

Above $60,000, then unearned income would be taxed the same as earned income, and above $1 million (the top 1/10 of 1% of households) then it would be taxed at 50%. Above $10 million, it would be taxed at 60%. Such a system would offer disincentives to the speculative hauls made by the top 1/10 of 1% while encouraging investing in the lower 99%.

Could such a system actually be passed into law and enforced by a captured, toady bureaucracy and Congress? Of course not. But it is still a worthy exercise to take apart the rationalizations being offered to justify rampant speculative looting, collusion, corruption and fraud.

The last step of the con is to raise taxes on the productive peasantry to provide the revenues needed to pay the Plutocracy its interest on Treasuries. If the "Bush tax cuts" are repealed, the actual effective rates paid on unearned income will remain half (20%) of the rates on earned income (wages, salaries, profits earned from small business, etc.) which are roughly 40% at higher income levels.

The financial Plutocracy will champion the need to rein in Federal debt, now that they have raised the debt via plundering the public coffers and extended ownership over that debt.

Now the con boils down to insuring the peasantry pay enough taxes to pay the interest on the Federal debt--interest which is sure to rise considerably. The 1% T-Bill rates were just part of the con to convince the peasantry that trillions of dollars could be borrowed "with no consequences." Those rates will steadily rise once the financial Power Elites own enough of the Treasury debt. Then the game plan will be to lock in handsome returns on long-term Treasuries, and command the toady politicos to support "austerity."

The austerity will not extend to the financial Elites, of course. That's the whole purpose of the con. "Some are more equal than others," indeed.

KING JAMES AND THE NEW ECONOMY: THE RICH GET RICHER

2010-07-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

RANDOM JACK: SPORTSLAND ESOTERICA.

With the rest of the world focused on the World Cup finals, America’s latest obsession was the decision of free agent NBA star LeBron James. Who would he choose to bless with his awesome talent and inspiring humility? After seven years of service, would he really turn his back on his hometown team? How much would he command?

In the most highly anticipated sporting event since the superb debut of Stephen Strasburg or the horrendous first post-trauma “press conference” of Tiger Woods, King James answered all questions with one word: Miami.

The Miami Heat had already signed superstar Chris Bosh and resigned superstar Dwyane Wade. With the addition of LeBron, Miami becomes the odds on favorite to win the NBA title and more importantly the team with the greatest star-driven marketability (unless you count Jack Nicholson with the Lakers). He reportedly will receive less than the Cleveland Cavaliers would have paid but if it translates into a string of championships the money will be astronomical.

Then there’s the glory. Let’s face it: You can’t be the King if your team is not a champion. The problem is: You can have three wise men but you can’t have three kings. No one knows how it will play out but if King James is reduced to Prince LeBron the dream may begin to unravel.

As a fan whose inclination is to root for the underdog (when my dog is not the hunt) this may be the first season since the days of Magic and Kareem when I root for the Lakers.

On a grander scale, if sport is a microcosm for the world at large, this is just the latest symptom of a disturbing economic trend: the rich get richer and richer and richer…

Fact: In 1970 the ratio of CEO (Chief Executive Officer) to average worker pay was 25:1. By 2000 it rose to 90:1. When stock options and other benefits are factored in the equation the latest estimate is 500:1.

Fact: The top one percent of the national population tripled its after tax income between 1980 and 2006 while the bottom 90% of the population declined by 20%. That elite one percent now owns 70% of the nation’s financial assets.

Fact: In 2009 while the nation’s workforce was suffering layoffs, reduced pay and benefits in the wake of the financial crisis, Wall Street doled out $150 billion in bonus checks: enough to pay five million people a salary of $30,000.

Fact: We now have the greatest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world.

[Memo to the Tea Party: Income inequality is antithesis to socialism. Our system is therefore so far removed from socialist you would be wiser and more credible to refer to the current administration as fascist though you would be hard pressed to distinguish it from prior administrations.]

What can we do? We are ostensibly a democracy. We could refuse to empower candidates who accept corporate contributions but we don’t. We could refuse to reward corporate crooks like Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina. We could insist on candidates who pledge to close the gap, to restore the goal of full employment, who value wages and worker rights over corporate favoritism (deregulation and tax breaks) but we don’t.

In the Sportsland analogy we could boycott the Miami Heat. We could refuse to tune in for that championship season. We could refuse to buy the King James jersey. We could confine the fan base to Miami. But we won’t.

Like a train wreck we have to watch – even if we are watching our own demise.

See: “The Rise of the Economic Elite” by David DeGraw, Dissident Voice, February 17, 2010.

RE: Gulf: "We are all guilty"

2010-06-12T22:11:00.000-07:00

[Note: Jimmi wZ is a resident of northern Florida, Gulf side. I asked him for his thoughts...]

Its a travesty.

All profit oriented, even the clean up process is ruled by the dollar. People are not even allowed to talk about it in certain communities because of the fear it bring to the tourist.

I heard that they could have stopped the thing at the start except they were afraid of losing the billion plus they spent on drilling the thing. I go to the beach three or four times a day thanking and offering apologies to the mother earth that we have abused.

We are getting what we deserve. Myself amongst all others for being so gutless to not fight for alternative ways of transport. Even now I am preparing to drive my mother across the country in a gas guzzling Motorhome... We are all guilty.

I truly hope that this is the wake up call to america and the rest of the world. It has to be terrible beyond means to make us wake up. The planet is screaming at us ... spewing her blood in to our life giving gulf. How else could she react?

Meanwhile they pour zillions of gallons of chemicals in to cover their tracks and try to hide the problem. Its going to get really bad down here.

It hasnt quite reached my shores yet... though it is only a matter of time.

Each little tiny creature will be effected. I caught whiff of some of the fumes a week ago. Burnt my eyes and closed up my throat. That was from a random cloud that snuck its way in on a windy night.

I heard that the ruskies used nukes to close up wells before... the oil industry is still more worried about profits then saving the gulf.

....

some thoughts

we are all desperate and angry down here... with little that we can do except complain and talk.

thanks for asking

wz

Beatlick TR: Grand Canyon 2 & 3

2010-06-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

Date: May 23, 2010 3:09 PM

Our first full day here in Tusayan we popped for an expensive IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon. After that we were pumped. It is so much fun to wander in the Visitor’s Center and listen to all the languages spoken. I heard Germans, British, a few other Western European accents I can’t identify and a swirl of Orientals. I can’t tell the Japanese from the Chinese, I’m ashamed to admit, but a line of about 30 folks, let’s say they were from Japan, were in a double line along with Beatlick Joe and I heading into the IMAX theater. I really go out of my way to smile big at people and give them eye contact. So I shot off a few smiles.

All of the folks I did give a friendly grin to looked beyond me with their shy eyes as if not to notice me at all. Oh well. As we all entered the theater, with ample seating I want to emphasize, all the people therein filtered out past the front seats to access the aisles on the left and right of the theater. There was no middle aisles.

In the upper rows there were about five more Oriental people waving to their friends below. At this point two of their lady friends in the lower level decided to make a beeline up to them and commenced climbing over the seats through the middle of the theater. It was over a dozen rows to the top. I don’t know if they were afraid other people would sit by their friends and leave them out, or what, as I said there were plenty of seats. Everyone else was using the aisles.

But at that moment when the two ladies started climbing over those seats like they were scaling Mount Fugi, their entire contingency of friends followed them. Every single one of them put the seat down, stood on it and hoisted a leg up and over the top to the next level, a dozen times each until they were all recongregated as a single unit at the top of the theater. It was the darnedest thing I’ve ever seen.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Date: May 26, 2010 11:23 AM

You see so many people at the Grand Canyon, it’s a game to try and figure what language is being spoken, what country someone is from.

Our young British friend Sam just fell into step with us and we enjoyed his company so much. He’s lucky, too, and extremely observant, as any good traveler should be. When he moved to our campground and wanted to heed the call of nature, Beatlick Joe handed him our Boy Scout shovel, some toilet paper and pointed him up the hillside. Up there he found a huge stash of beer and other flavored alcoholic beverages – almost a hundred dollars worth of drinks – all stashed behind this big log. We split the cache up between the three of us and me being “Miss Know It All” speculated “Somebody stole all this and then got caught after stealing something else and never got to come back for their stash.”

After Sam had left, on Saturday night and well after dark, a string of about five cars circled our campsite and formed a circle like a wagon train. Half a dozen teenagers started up the hill in the dark and I knew immediately what they were doing there. They had come for that stash of alcohol. Well, of course, they came back empty handed. Everybody just jumped back into their vehicles and peeled out of the camp. Thanks kids! Honor your elders!

The wind is really beginning to pick up and it’s harder to enjoy the Canyon trails. We walked down the South Kaibab Trail about one mile just to soak up the trail experience. One woman passed us with those hiking poles, dressed in little more than a swim suit. She said she had hiked from the North Rim, about 20 miles. She was obviously an accomplished athlete by the appearance of her body, but she was breathing hard.

“Oh come on,” she gasped, when she saw the last tiers of switchbacks still ahead of her. “You’re only five more minutes away,” I encouraged her.

“Finally!” she exclaimed.

We spent about an hour on the trail and then headed up to the Yavapai Observation Station for a lecture from one of the rangers. The wind got so cold and strong that I opted out and waited for Joe at the observation point there. That’s when I learned that someone jumped off of Mather Point yesterday. Apparently it’s becoming a popular place to commit suicide, like Niagara Falls, I assume. A park worker also fell to his death this week also and the flags are flying at half mast this week. The ranger had a black ribbon on her badge as well to honor a fallen park worker.

Such a pity, but the hustle and bustle of the park never stops and apparently the park never closes. We hope we have our definitive shot of the van by the Canyon. I sneaked in a restricted road early on Sunday morning to get the best shot and skedaddled out quick before we got caught.

It’s truly a dream come true for many to get here and at $500 a pop the helicopter are constantly competing with the condors for air space. On the tarmac over at the airport about five out of seven keep their rotor blades going as the passengers shuffle in and out.

The huge old log hotel, El Tavor, seems packed and the buses are certainly packed bringing in large group tours. Mostly I have seen Orientals and Germans; I guess they have the most money these days to travel. East Indians pull a close third, Brits, Mid-Easterners next and I haven’t really heard any French spoken or seen many Africans, but a small percentage of African Americans.

The lodges inside the park by the rim seem to attract some really dead-serious athletes. A number of hikers crash around us on the ancient leather seats in the lobby of the El Tovar Hotel along with a wedding party. All manner of taxidermed animal trophies line the upper reaches of the big lobby, their glassy eyes rest upon us all.

Happy Trails,
Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick TR: On the way to the Grand Canyon

2010-06-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

Date: May 21, 2010 9:17 PM

Well we sped out of Organ, NM, with the most power I guess I have ever had in this engine. I blew a valve, whatever that means, right in Michael’s driveway. Convenient. So he broke down the whole engine and things are up and running again.

We made a stop in San Rafael to visit Andrew again. He is an old friend from my days in Alaska. Old friends are such luxuries. He took one look at my hair and put me in his chair and gave me a much needed haircut. We wined and dined each other and laughed unceasingly for two days. Then it was time to head out to the Grand Canyon.

We retraced I40 and saw big changes as soon as we crossed the state line to Arizona. Back in 2003 we came this way and visited a new state park for the Homolovi Ruins. Now it is already closed down. Plus all the rest areas on the interstate are closed and barricaded. What a mess.

We drove straight to Flagstaff and pulled off some awesome “urban camping.” It was a Sunday afternoon and we wound up parking high on the hill downtown by the courthouse. We ignored the 2-hour parking signs because it was Sunday and left the van parked right there on the corner all day.

Later that night we backed up a few spaces to get out of the glare of the street lamps so we would blend in a little better in the shadows. Then we pulled all the curtains and settled in for the night. Joe’s clairvoyance woke him up about 2:30 am. He punched me and said, “Look.”

Through the curtains we could red lights flashing outside. I got up to step outside and volunteer to move along, but Joe said, “Wait, maybe it’s not us they are looking at.” So still as little church mice we waited and sure enough the cops passed us on by. So we went back to sleep but I was wide awake at 6 am so went on and found another spot for a few hours more.

Flagstaff is a great little town reminding me of those other picturesque small Arizona mining towns like Jerome, Globe and Bisbee, which harken back to another era. It was especially fun to see an AmTrac train station too, see all the passengers disembarking, scurrying off to the loud clanging of the signals.

We went to the old Monte Vista Hotel for internet access and again somebody asked Joe if he was Willy Nelson. I guess it’s that headband he’s been wearing. This guy was really drunk and soon after the bartender rescinded his drinking privileges.

On Monday we headed to Williams to stock up for the Canyon. Lord knows I still have plenty of beans from that 20 pound bag I bought back in Fort Stockton. We drove to the town of Tusayan where the Grand Canyon bus stops are located and found an awesome place to park in the forest nearby. We can walk to the bus stop and into town.

Happy Trails

Beatlick Pamela

[Note: The Beatlicks are Pamela Hirst & Joe Speers.]

DAMNABLE LIES & DECEPTIONS: THE CALIFORNIA INITIATIVE PROCESS 2010

2010-06-03T14:55:00.000-07:00

RANDOM JACK. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

By Jack Random

When one considers statewide initiatives to amend the constitution, the fallback position and natural predisposition should be skeptical. It costs a great deal to put a proposition on the ballot in the great state of California. The people gathering signatures outside your local grocery or drug store are not volunteers. It costs real money to gather enough legitimate signatures to cover five percent of the latest gubernatorial election.

If someone goes to the trouble and expense of putting a proposition on the ballot through the initiative process it is rarely for the public good. It is rather for the benefit of the sponsor. There may be exceptions but they are rare.

On the June 8, 2010 ballot we have five statewide propositions. Three are the work of the legislature. Of these three, one is uncontested and of minimal consequence and two are worthy of passage. The remaining two, whose true sponsors and intent are cleverly disguised, are clear examples of what is wrong with the initiative process. Reminiscent of the infamous Prop 13 of 1978 that more than any other single act or event set the stage for California’s eventual financial collapse, they are the work of con artists. In plain language, they are lies and deceptions.

The following is a voting guide for those of similar political and policy views.

Legislative Initiatives:

Proposition 13: Elimination of Seismic Retrofitting Disincentive. As the ballot guide states, passage would enable property owners to upgrade buildings for earthquakes without incurring property tax penalties. Vote Yes.

PROPOSITION 14: Relatively Open Primaries. Enables voters to vote for any candidate in primary elections regardless of party. The top two face a runoff in the general election.

Any measure that lessens the major party stranglehold on the electoral process is a step in the right direction. The opposition is disingenuous in its objection that the candidates would no longer be required to state their party affiliation. They protest that candidates will charade as “independents.” Is that really a problem? I have no problem with a candidate “pretending” to be independent as long he or she votes as he or she pretends. Is that the best the opponents can do?

Mark it: If the polls show this one is close, the big money from the major party machines will come in to knock it down.

VOTE YES.

PROPOSITION 15: FAIR ELECTIONS, PUBLIC FINANCING. Repeals the ban on public funding of political campaigns. Provides equal financing for qualified candidates who refuse to take corporate or private contributions.

When did we ban public funding of elections? Whose brilliant idea was that? Were we insane or did we like having our politicians sold to the highest contributor? Repeal the ban and restore some semblance of sanity and fair play. The opposition is obviously the same lobbyists who are required to pay the cost of public funding under this initiative. How’s that for justice? The opposition says it “raises taxes” but the voter’s guide says it actually increases revenues by imposing fees on lobbyists. That’s the kind of “tax” we can all live with.

VOTE YES.

Voter Initiatives:

PROPOSITION 16: PROTECTING THE PG&E MONOPOLY. This one is the biggest lie and deception of all. Does anyone out there still remember the energy crisis of 2000-2001? It effectively transferred $50 billion from the California economy to Texas oil and energy corporations through fraudulent manipulation of energy prices. The only localities protected from the manipulations of traders were those who contracted their own energy supply. This proposition would be an open invitation to do again what they did in 2000-2001. The California corporations that hold near monopoly control now and want to secure their dominance through this initiative are Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric. They are not public entities. They are private corporations out for a buck. The claim that they represent the people’s right to vote is laughable. I would actually consider voting for such a proposition if they called for a vote of the majority. That would be democratic. That they call for a two thirds vote to overrule their dominance is a clear giveaway. This is a hustle and a scam.

VOTE NO.

PROPOSITION 17: THE MERCURY INSURANCE STING. This is a proposition with one sponsor: Mercury Insurance. Not known for their ethical or generous practices, they have connived to offer some of us a discount maybe under certain circumstances as long as we allow them to punish our friends and neighbors with outrageous surcharges for allowing our car insurance to lapse at some time in the past five years. Read the fine print and figure it out. It’s a hustle. When was the last time an insurance company put a measure on the ballot so it could lower rates?

VOTE NO AND BOYCOTT MERCURY INSURANCE.

Jazz.

Funding Data according to “Politics and Society” (University of Southern California):

Primary Sponsor of Proposition 15: California Nurses Association.

Primary Sponsor of Proposition 16: PG&E $35 million.

Primary Sponsor of Proposition 17: Mercury Insurance $10 million.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES, HARD TIMES, GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION, THE KILLING SPIRIT AND NUMBER NINE: THE ADVENTURES OF JAKE JONES AND RUBY DAULTON.

And the Oil Flows...like a river rising

2010-06-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

BEYOND IMPATIENT
(And the Oil Flows on Like a River Rising)

By Jack Random

It is not just the Gulf of Mexico.

I hoped but never really expected this president to be the architect of a second New Deal. I hoped but never expected Obama to pull our troops out of foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before the end of his first term. I hoped but never expected this administration to champion the universal right to healthcare. I hoped but never expected the Obama White House to turn its back on the elite of Wall Street and the financial aristocracy. I hoped but never expected Obama to christen the age of clean energy and universal mass transit.

I realized long before the election that Obama was not an ideologue and if he fell on the left of the political spectrum it was more rhetorical than real. Barack Obama was and is a pragmatist in the Clinton mold of triangulation and compromise.

What I did expect was bureaucratic competence and efficiency. I expected every do nothing administrator from the Bush era, those who never believed in the jobs they were assigned to do, to be replaced post haste with serious and experienced individuals intent on fulfilling the mandates of their positions.

It should be obvious by now that nothing of the sort took place in the Department of Interior where the fox guarding the henhouse principle was in play for the Minerals Management Service. Nothing of the sort took place at the Mine Safety and Health Administration under a Department of Labor that failed to hold Massey Energy to code prior to the latest coal mining disaster (another 29 miners died).

It has become clear that the Obama administration rather than working to reform government has merely responded to crises. The lesson of the ongoing gulf catastrophe is that the stakes are far too high to simply wait for the inevitable. In that sense, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is comparable to both the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the wizardry on Wall Street that nearly toppled the towers of the financial empire.

In all three cases, the convergence of events that resulted in catastrophe and/or near catastrophe was absolutely predictable. The Army Corps of Engineers knew with absolute certainty that at some point a storm would topple the compromised levees protecting New Orleans. They either didn’t care because the likely victims were poor or the folks in charge gambled it would not happen on their watch. The same gamble took place on Wall Street where the CEO’s and high-stake rollers built their paper fortunes on fraud and deception knowing they were as phony as an accountant’s sympathy. They gambled it would not happen on their watch and even if it did they hedged their bets by investing in the same politicians that would consent to bail them out.

The experts in both government and the petroleum industry knew full well that a disaster was coming. A similar event happened off the shores of Australia as recently as last summer. Then as now there was no failsafe and no effective means of capping the leak (a euphemism for an open gash) or effectively mitigating the damage.

(Even now as the oil spews into the gulf in untold quantities a report from Esquire suggests that the Saudis effectively employed super tankers as vacuums to clean up a massive spill in the Gulf of Arabia circa 1994. If the Obama administration has not thoroughly investigated this report and applied its lessons as warranted, then it is guilty of negligence. If it has failed to act because of the economic costs then it is guilty of complicity in one of the most horrendous crimes against the environment in modern history.)

This administration may or may not have reacted quickly and decisively to this latest catastrophe. On that I will not stand in judgment. I do not have access to all relevant information but the fact is: They should have acted long before the crisis. There were numerous reports about the suspect agency collaborating with the very personnel they were supposed to hold accountable. In the Bush tradition, they were not regulators at all. They were in the pocket of the industry. They were cheerleaders skimming profits while they polished their resumes for jobs in the industry when their terms in government finally expired.

How many other agencies remain unchanged since the days of the anti-regulators? How many more Deepwater Horizons will we witness before the Obama administration decides it can move forward and clean house before a crisis hits?

Disappointed? Yes. I fear that this administration cares more about losing the friendship and loyal contributions of the industries and corporate institutions engaged in unlawful and egregious practices than it does about the working, tax paying, public-school-attending people that invested their hopes in him. I fear that Obama more resembles Lyndon Johnson in his fear of being blamed for losing a war than he does for the real interests of the nation. I fear he cares more about electoral politics than the long-term consequences of inaction.

We should have left Iraq lock stock and barrel years ago. The civil war between the Shiites and the Sunni (with the Kurds in the middle) awaits the day of our departure and nothing we can do will change that. The situation in Afghanistan is untenable. The Afghans like the Iraqis will ultimately hold sway with the Pakistanis serving as power brokers and us on the outside hoping for the best. We can debate what should have been done years ago until we’re exhausted from the exertion but the truth will remain it is far too late to salvage anything in the national interest.

We recently learned that the number of soldiers in Afghanistan for the first time exceeded the number in Iraq. We also passed a milestone in casualties: One thousand American soldiers have died in the Afghan War. (Number one thousand on the casualty list was Corporal Jacob Leicht. He was twenty-four years old and he was born on the fourth of July.) As in Iraq we have only a vague notion of how many Afghans have died in the war but we can be assured the number far exceeds any estimate the military will provide.

We elected Obama in part to clean up the mess that Bush left. We have a right to expect that much. We are growing impatient. We are beyond impatient. The damage to the Gulf of Mexico and indeed the vast interconnected ecosystem of the seven seas far exceeds a legacy any president might have earned.

We have only one expectation now: Stop the spill. Stop it now or spend every penny and every waking hour trying to stop it. Do not tell me the best minds in the world would allow this open gash in the gulf floor to spew oil without restraint for over six weeks no less another four months!

If that is the case and this is the very best we can do then this gamble was so completely reckless and ill-advised that everyone with a hand in it should be held criminally accountable. Let the dopers, dealers and swindlers out and put these corporate and bureaucratic crooks in jail for as long as the oil remains in Gulf waters and on Gulf shores.

Think that might speed up the process? You betcha!

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS.

THOUGHTS ON SPORTLAND ESOTERICA: Golf, Baseball, Drugs and the Long Putter.

2010-05-09T17:44:00.000-07:00

Now that South African Tim Clark has won the Players Championship, the unofficial fifth major in professional golf, it is time to revisit the legality of the long putter. For the uninitiated, the user of the long putter grounds the club to his body placing his top hand over the hub of the club so it does not directly touch his chest or stomach as the case may be. As any golfer knows the long putter is the last resort for a player who has lost his putting touch. In an age when performance-enhancing drugs are the ultimate stain on an athlete’s reputation this performance enhancing technique is merely frowned upon.

Golf should save itself the embarrassment of a player winning one of the real majors using the grounded putter before it happens. It is as much an affront to the game of golf as the aluminum bat is to the game of baseball. Like the square grooved wedge it should be banned. No exceptions.

Speaking of golf, the demise of Tiger Woods has been dramatic. A year ago Tiger’s march to overtake the record of the Golden Bear Jack Nicklaus seemed certain. Now it is anything but. Given back-to-back poor showings and his withdrawal during the final round of the Players Championship with what may be a spinal injury, a host of new questions suddenly come into play.

Tiger Woods is beginning to fit the profile of an athlete who has used performance-enhancing drugs (steroids or human growth hormones). Typically, the user of these substances has an explosion in performance followed by a sudden and dramatic decline. They tend to have egos the size of Kilimanjaro, confidence bordering on megalomania, extreme difficulty controlling their emotions and their private lives are often prone to train wrecks. Typically, after several years of exceptional performance, their bodies begin to break down. Witness Ken Caminiti, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGuire, Roger Clemens, on and on.

It is fair to say that the enhancing portion of these drugs is short term and the long term is debilitating.

As a fan of the game I bear no ill will toward any of its players – certainly not the exceptional athletes that have fallen to the temptation of drug enhancement. The corporate sponsors of the game love and reward them as they rise and blame them as they fall. No one can doubt the exceptional talents of these athletes or the tremendous pressures they are under to boost their production.

The thing is: In the long run, the payback is far too severe.

Keep the game pure. If it seems unfair or offends the senses it should be banned. No penalties. No condemnations. No prosecutions or incriminations.

Just protect the game and keep it real.

One additional thought: For those still looking for role models in sports (a dubious practice) look no further than Steve Nash and Los Suns of Phoenix. Staging a protest of their state's unconscionably discriminatory anti-immigrant law was not only appropriate but socially responsible.

Random.

Beatlick Travel Report: Astor Park Survival Camp

2010-03-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

Subject: Astor Park, Beatlick Survival Camp
Date: Mar 18, 2010 12:59 PM

Another hot dusty day out here at Astor Park. Neil showed up with his four teens and a friend. So we had a population explosion. I am learning how to work with cement as we are all trying to help Neil get his first shelter set up. You know I call this survivor camp but truly we could never survive out here if it wasn't for Henry, Neil's brother, bringing us water almost every day, plus all those rides into town for beer and ice.

One policy I have initiated here is to cut Joe some slack. He is so serious about his reading and writing and I want to be supportive so we have set up days or parts of days where I cannot ask him to do something for me. I have to do it myself. He has me so spoiled that it is a real revelation to realize how much easier he makes the day go by with his constant help and attention. So as I say I am cutting him some slack.

The coyotes are getting more numerous and louder. I don't think they are coming into the camp but their yipping keeps me on my toes. Haven't seen any snakes or spiders but I imagine the season is coming upon us soon. We take the arroyos and trails to town. We named them streets from Nashville and the old neighborhood: Kipling Dr., Briley Parkway, 440. We get a real kick out of that.

The spring break really loaded up the RV parks around here. As much neglect and off business as we have seen in so many other places, there is nothing like that going on around here. The place is hopping all around Terlingua and Study Butte. We headed down to the little ghost town of Terlingua and sat out on the porch. It is loaded with tourists. Neil started playing somebody's new guitar and a crowd gathered around him in no time. His kids stood by in admiration as well. He is quite the character.

People were coming in from all over and taking pictures of Neil as the crowd grew around him. It was a hot day and the beer was cold, before I knew what was happening I had gone into the store with a big buzz on and mailed my sister a very expensive birthday present. I will have to learn to check my enthusiasum when I head into the big city of Terlingua.

Everytime we go to the RV park to use the Wi-fi I look a little worse. Today I have dirt, dust and cement all over me. Haven't had a bath in two days and didn't even attempt to comb my hair. My, my: attractive.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

RE: Blame the Teachers

2010-03-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

APOLOGIES TO LOUISIANA AND MISSISSIPPI:

In my commentary on education (Blame the Teacher Syndrome, Dissident Voice, 15 March 2010) I made some inaccurate and/or misleading statements. My statement regarding California's ranking among the states in "per capita" funding should have stated "per student" funding (Education Week, California Teachers Association). The rankings are adjusted for cost of living. The new ranking includes projected cuts in the coming school year. I also implied that Louisiana and Mississippi had been ranked lower than California. In fact Louisiana was ranked 27th and Mississippi 39th. The states previously ranked lower than California were Texas, Nevada, Arizona and Utah.

Apologies are due to Louisiana and Mississippi.

Jazz

RE: Blame the Teachers

2010-03-16T20:05:00.000-07:00

Sad but so true! I see this played out on a weekly basis when I teach chess at Dr. George Washington Carver Elementary School. They are centrally located in the notorious San Francisco neighborhood called Bayview Hunter’s Point. I have been teaching chess there for over nine years, and each year the struggle continues for the dedicated Teachers and staff that are committed to these wonderful children who are directly impacted by poverty, gang violence, and drugs in the community. The neighborhoods are blighted, and the threat of gentrification and closing down the school is always looming large. The Principal and I, Mrs. Emily Wade-Thompson, have become good friends over the years. She is an amazing African-American woman who runs her school like an African Village, instilling pride in her students by teaching them their history and heritage. The students are called “Achievers”, and taught a list of core values based on the Swahili language, for example Umoja, which means Unity in the community. Her plight, and that of her fellow educators, and those of each and every “Achiever” around this country is given nothing but lip service and chicanery by our elected officials, corporations, and parents, whom all want to blame the teachers. It takes a village to raise a child.

Wakiza McQueen

[Note: "Blame the Teacher Syndrome: A Misguided Education Policy" by Jack Random posted on Dissident Voice, March 15, 2010.]

RE: To Jack Kerouac on His 88th Birthday‏

2010-03-13T17:54:00.000-08:00

By ivan arguelles

bride's shadow made white by truck
going all the way to Big Sur
bums depleted by dhamma tight
band around head no high Way
at all like streaking light in Eye
panther of heart makes leap Beat
sleeping butterfly shakes in sewer
rain caught for a fraction of eternity
rooftops burn with Mental flame
bridge presses azure to sky wants
to Die! bottle to breast & cries

arguelles after mansel

Mind of Mansel: Poetry Corner

2010-03-12T21:25:00.001-08:00

To Jack Kerouac on His 88th Birthday

early morning and the street is swept
by a white truck followed by birds
in the shade of a bride's shadow

lightning streaking from the silent eyes
of a half-mad cat who's paw is caught
in a sewer grate

the shore pouring over the bridge
the ledge pressing into the sky
somewhere a butterfly is shaking
because he doesn't want to die

Chris Mansel

Beatlick Travel Report/Astor Park: Survival Camp

2010-03-10T17:38:00.000-08:00

Beatlick Joe and I took our first three-mile walk to the wi-fi cafe down a long dirt road and around a few mountains. We have been at Astor Camp, courtesy of Neil Astor, for about five days and I have dismantled the whole campsite and put it back together every single day since we got here. We were so excited when we arrived on Friday that we put up our custom tent that attaches to the van. Then I attached a tarp to the tent and we raised up the van roof to access our sleeping quarters. With all that we had some serious square footage.

I spent the second day, all day, figuring out how to build a fire pit. It seems like it would be simple, but getting all those irregular stones into some semblance of order and important to me balance and appeal, took hours. At first I had a big, huge really, stone flush to the ground for a base. I had rolled it uphill myself. This is exactly the kind of grunt work in which Joe Speer has absolutely no interest. It didn't look right so I started all over and dug a hole to build up a bit of a firewall and put the rock into it. I hauled a bunch of large stones needed for circling the pit. But by the time I was finished fussing with all the rocks and moving them around, the peculiar soil out here full of Bentonite had all blown away and the stone was back flush to the ground again. Where did my hole go? I kept asking Joe.

Inside the tent I put up a shelf and stacked all the canned goods, we had a table and chairs, all the kitchen utensils, water and wash basin, it was like an apartment. I was ecstatic. Outside we have a 20-gallon jug, a 5-gallon jug, inside a 3-gallon jug with spicket and about five more gallon jugs. We were great for about 36 hours. Then the wind kicked up. At one point I was leaning against the tent like those actors on the prow of the Titanic. It was between something like that and wind surfing. I could lean the entire weight of my body back against the tent rigging the gales were so strong. After a few hours of that we decided we had to take our irreplaceable custom tent down rather than damage it.

So on the third day I had to load everything I had taken out of the van back into it. That day I attached the tarp straight to the van and had a little awning. That was a real comedown after all the spaciousness of the day before. On the fourth day Joe suggested we put the tarp up on the tent frame. And THAT has been the answer. We can sit outside under a nice large tarp and move the chairs, table and a futon Neil left behind all in the appropriate shade provided as the sun rotates around the panorama.

We cook on the fireplace except in the morning. We have coffee in the van first thing, check out the landscape and see what the sun and wind are doing. There is not a single telephone pole to be seen out here. The only cars on the private road are other property owners. And it is quiet. And still. We often cook with Henry, our neighbor, who is Neil's brother. Only once was I ever able to pick up the Marfa NPR station so only music on the renegade Terlingua station Cayote Radio 100.1. It's good, really good, but I do miss the news.

We've watched a few movies on our DVD using Henry's solar equipment. We spend a lot of time reading, hiking and setting up camp for now. The sky is just becoming overwhelming to me. I see more up there than I can figure out. I'm not even that interested in sitting out there watching the stars right now because I can't always wrap my head around what I see. Neil is coming soon and we hope he approves of our camp design.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

THE LORDS OF OBSTRUCTION:

2010-03-05T17:22:00.000-08:00

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

THE CASE FOR SENATORIAL REFORM

By Jack Random

Since the State of the Union Address President Obama has engaged his opposition, including members of his own party, and the only thing he has proven is what we already knew: He is the smartest man in the room. Any room. Certainly any room crowded with posturing and pontificating members of the United States Senate.

In the most recent encounter, a summit on health care, he asked of the opposition only one thing: that they should come without a list of talking points. After careful consideration and according to insider reports considerable rehearsal, the party of opposition came with exactly that. Over seven painful hours of repetitive rhetoric the esteemed Senators could not even vary the phrasing. We need to scrap the bill. We need to start over with a clean sheet of paper. We cannot support a government takeover. On and on.

It was all theater and bad theater at that. It was like watching a seven-hour version of Samuel Beckett’s classic existential play Waiting for Godot. Godot is the spirit of bipartisanship and by now even the president must know Godot never comes.

The government is broken, our democracy in shambles, and healthcare reform (such as it is) has been held hostage for a year while another 45,000 Americans have died for lack of health insurance. I do not know the validity of that oft-sited estimate but I do know this: Lives are at stake and the protocol of the Senate was not worth a single life.

President Obama lost the high ground of the healthcare debate when he placed the value of Senatorial rules and the illusion of bipartisanship over the health and safety of the people he was sworn to protect.

Now we are confronted with the possibility of a watered down healthcare package passing through budget reconciliation and the Republicans are crying foul. For the first year of the Obama presidency they shamelessly abused the power of the filibuster to obstruct all major legislation and now they cry foul.

Most shameful of all is Senator Orrin Hatch who attacked the invocation of reconciliation with the claim that it would be “an assault to the democratic process.”

The Senator has it backwards. The invocation of the filibuster to obstruct the will of the people and the majority of their representatives is an assault on democracy itself. Senators can drone on as long as they wish about the rights of the minority but there is no minority in the United States Senate worth protecting. It is an elitist club, a club of millionaires, and its insistence on the right to endless debate in order to prevent a majority vote is a power grab and an affront to the constitution which grants them no such power.

The American system of government was modeled on the British Parliament. In place of the King we have a president. In place of the Commons we established Congress. And in place of the House of Lords we established the United States Senate.

The House of Lords was originally composed of the British Aristocracy. It was an unelected body of wealthy, privileged individuals, some of whom were appointed by the King and some who were chosen by hereditary succession. They were born to power and they held the right of veto over all legislation passed by the House of Commons.

As the British system embraced the principles of democratic rule it was inevitable that the power of the Lords would stand in the way. It was the antithesis of democracy. It was designed to protect the interests of the elite by obstructing the will of the people.

The power of the House of Lords came under assault in 1906 when the Liberal Party took control of the Commons in a landslide election. It was clear that the legislative mandate for which ministers of parliament were elected (Irish home rule and social reform) could not be enacted without first curtailing the power of the Lords.

It was a long hard battle against entrenched interests and in fact the process remains to be completed today but the House of Lords is only a shadow of the institution it once was. The Lords still exists but like the monarchy itself it is fundamentally a symbol, a figurehead, a remembrance of a time when Kings and Queens held absolute sway over the fate of nations. The Lords still have some measure of power but should they abuse it they are keenly aware that the power of democracy will once again rise up to put them in their rightful place.

What British democracy confronted at the beginning of the last century is analogous to what American democracy confronts today. For while we now elect members of the Senate (the 17th Amendment) it remains undeniably the least representative and therefore the most anti-democratic institution in American government. Because of its power to obstruct legislation it attracts powerful interests so that every Senator requires more and more millions of dollars to finance an election campaign. Promises are made and debts are paid.

The problem with American government is not the men and women who fill the seats of the Senate per se. It is the institution itself.

Leave alone the problem of disproportionate representation [1]. Stand aside the problem of undue corporate influence, a problem compounded by the unconscionable ruling of our corporate Supreme Court. These are flaws that must be rectified if we are to achieve a more perfect union and a more functional government but the immediate problem we must address is the power grab of the Senatorial filibuster.

There is no man or woman in this or any other nation who believes in democracy yet will rise in defense of granting a minority in any deliberative body the absolute power of obstruction. Conversely, any man or woman who supports the filibuster rule as it now operates cannot claim to believe in democracy.

We as a nation have far too many pressing matters to allow this display of mindless power manipulations and political posturing to continue ad nauseum.

I do not propose the abolition of the Senate. It has its role. Our system works best when the Senate performs in earnest its duties as prescribed in the constitution. Moreover, it can produce great leaders and prepare them to ascend to the presidency. But the Senate is not a marble monument. It is neither sacred nor strictly speaking necessary. It must adapt and change. It must embrace the democratic ideal and not seek to thwart it. It must become more democratic and less elitist.

It must sacrifice the power of the minority to obstruct the business of the nation. If it does not it will inevitably find itself under assault like the British House of Lords and with good cause.

The British did not abolish the House of Lords but they could have and might have if the Lords themselves did not recognize that the age of aristocracy is over.

Jazz.

[1] Even Alexander Hamilton, the champion of all modern conservatives, denounced the disproportionate representation of the US Senate: “It is not in human nature that Virginia and the large States should consent to it, or if they did that they should long abide by it. It shocks too much the ideas of Justice, and every human feeling. Bad principles in a Government though slow are sure in their operation and will gradually destroy it.”

From “The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787” by James Madison.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). A COLUMNIST FOR THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, WORLD EDITION, HIS CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Beatlick Travel Report: Truth or Consequences

2010-02-25T21:20:00.000-08:00

Date: Feb 25, 2010 3:40 PM

“There’s more consequences than truth” is the saying around here, especially when water and real estate might be the topic. Like the elephant bone yard this town is the bone yard for vintage Airstreams and they speckle the landscape. We’ve pulled into the Artesian RV Park and Bathhouse for a month. The Black Cat Bookstore has poetry readings twice a month. There is a radical underground radio station FM 96.1, political rant website (www.desertjournalonline.com/underground_truth.htm), a good library, grocery store, and cheap diners. A population of mature citizens, young upstarts ready to make a fortune when the Spaceport project of Virgin Airline’s Richard Branson’s gets off the ground, and a constant trickle of bathers and tourists all pass each other in a dusty gauzy throwback to the 1950s.

This is the closest I’ve ever come to living in a trailer park. There are 36 units here with the basic hookups then a laundry room, freezer (where we keep freezing water jugs instead of buying ice) and half-off the soaks. Plus wi-fi so we can just lay around and watch online movies all day if we want. I have a small electric heater we can use at night, plus I got a Mr. Heater portable stove that runs on propane canisters. I LOVE IT. It’s just like sitting around a little hearth. We’ve got the tent attached to the van and have received three visitors since we got here. Once we went to the Pinch and Swallow on Broadway to see Las Cruces’s favorite bluegrass band man Steve Smith. Apparently “Dr. Bob” of T or C hosts these musical soirees in the bar that served him as therapeutic exercise during a stressful time in his career. I don’t have last names or all the facts because this is just what I picked up hanging around the stage. You have to bring your own refreshments, it’s not a commercial operation. There is an enormous mural on the wall, must be forty feet long, tripped out, that the good doctor painted himself as a de-stressor. Steve Smith’s band is fabulous and much of the “mature” audience members broke into groups just like junior high. I don’t know what they put in the water around here but there is a really unique congregation of very cheerful, well-satisfied elders here.

The women danced mostly with each other in the back while the men hopped around in a mild version of a mosh pit up front. Some of their outfits were “which-way-to-the-festival-man style," layers of long and short skirts, odd hats and plenty of jewelry. The men were a little more subdued but most had long beards and looked like old Civil War soldiers. There are a lot of wheelchairs around town, there’s a nearby VA hospital, and many old-timers on their scooters going up and down the street with their flags furling dune-buggy style. I eavesdrop on the conversations around me. A group of residents down at the thrift store agree this winter has been one of the worst for longevity. “You can tell things are changing,” one ancient said, “everybody I know has a cold.”

I guess they are recalling the glory days when all the bath house cottages were new and the WPA had just laid down the town’s concrete sidewalks. Everything is out of an old black-and-white movie now. One voyager up the street who passed by on his scooter told me his parents lived here way back when and he moved here permanently in the early 90s. “Nuthin’s really changed too much around here, but the price of real estate.”

There is this boom town talk that does make me leery. All the young folks are speculators and all the old folks are skeptics. A lot of the promises of glory sound so much like the stories we’ve heard about in New Mexico’s history of boom and bust. The whole town is for sale just about and that lends a real ghost town feel to the place. Too bad somebody doesn’t come in here and set money on fire like they have done in Marfa, Texas.

The trip to T or C has been a good practice run before we turn around and go back to Study Butte. I had to interrupt our plans to have a root canal redone in El Paso. But we are back on track for Survival Camp at Astor Park in Study Butte, Texas, by the Big Bend National Park. They call it Far West, Texas, out there but I call it Far Out West Texas.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela Hirst

TIGER, TIGER: THE SCARLET LETTER

2010-02-21T22:03:00.000-08:00

A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

THE SCARLET LETTER: W IS FOR WRONG

By Jack Random

I was wrong. I was foolish. I don't get to play by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me.

Tiger Woods, February 19, 2010.

Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy.

Paul Krugman, September 2, 2009.

Tiger Woods was compelled by media outcry to stand before the cameras and submit to public humiliation. For some fifteen minutes on a Friday morning the world stopped to witness the event and sit in judgment on the sincerity of his contrition. Within seconds of his scripted performance the media was clamoring for more. They feel entitled. The public needs to know. The public demands.

Tiger Woods will no doubt deliver in the fullness of time. He is no longer a golfer. He is no longer the man destined to break Jack Nicklaus’s record of eighteen major golf championships. He is a serial adulterer. He wears a scarlet letter. He will always wear it. Someday he will return to the sport in which he excels and his accomplishments may again outweigh the foibles of his private life but he will never lose the scarlet letter.

The world is not a just place. It is no more just that a golfer should make hundreds of millions of dollars and be crowned the king of a billion dollar corporation than it is for that same golfer to submit to public humiliation for private wrongs.

If not for the corporate monster that has planted itself around Tiger Woods, he would not owe the media anything. If he were just a golfer he could invoke the spirit of Charles (I am not a role model) Barkley, make amends with his wife and family, return to the game on his own time schedule, and refuse to engage the media circus any further.

When it comes down to it, golf is just a game and Tiger is just a player. He is not a public official and his judgment does not directly affect the lives and well being of anyone outside his circle of friends, family and associates.

There are plenty of people in public life who deserve the kind of scrutiny and harsh judgment that is bestowed on the world’s most famous (now infamous) athlete for they have assumed a public stance and their pronouncements and decisions have had a profound effect on the lives and well being of millions, indeed, on the welfare of the nation and the world.

They include the “experts” and officials who served as propagandists and perpetrators of the nation’s most disgraceful war since Vietnam and their names include retired Generals David Grange, Wayne Downing, James Marks and Barry McCaffrey, retired Major Generals Don Sheppard and Bob Scales, retired Lieutenant General Tom McInerney, retired Colonels Wayne Allard and William Cowan, retired Captain Charles Nash, and of course the irrepressible torturer-in-chief Dick Cheney. Virtually all of these so-called “experts” had active interests in the war machine and were serving as nothing less than lobbyists.

If anyone deserves to pay the price of public humiliation, loss of credibility and the scarlet letter of betrayal it is the government propagandist who charades under the guise of an impartial media analyst.

Tiger Woods betrayed his wife. These individuals betrayed the nation and every soldier who would come to serve in that misbegotten war. And yet they still appear as media experts without any revelation of their checkered pasts. Of course for the media to expose them they would have to reveal their own complicity in cowardly compromise and this they will not do.

Another class of media pundit that deserves an indelible mark of shame is the economist or economic expert that promoted endless deregulation of the financial markets for more than a decade and failed to foresee the inevitable collapse in the housing market, triggering a cascade of implosions that brought the global economy to its knees.

They include Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Ben Stein of commercial fame, former Senator Phil Gramm, Allan Meltzer of the American Enterprise Institute, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, former Times columnist Bill Kristol, Milton Friedman, Bruce Bartlett, virtually every major bank president, every CEO of a major financial institution, and countless others. Given the bipartisan consensus initiated by former president Clinton, there are in fact only a handful of economic experts who did not get it wrong and none of them are in positions of power today. So be it. Anyone who was so blinded by group think that they could not see this train wreck coming does not deserve to be considered an expert in the field.

Tiger Woods cheated on his wife and got caught. These people helped to defraud every stock and pension holder in the world and escaped unscathed, often with multi-million dollar bonuses. If we gave these individuals the public flogging they deserve they would not be empowered to fight back essential financial institution reforms today.

The time will come when the advocates of the Afghan war and global “free” trade will also come to judgment. When it is finally determined beyond doubt that our efforts in Afghanistan are in vain and that the trade policies of neo-liberalism have created an economic divide on par with feudalism, then all those pretenders should step forward for their own public humiliation.

But we should not be vengeful. It is not punishment we desire. It is only information to which we should be entitled. We need not place a permanent mark on their brows that would force them to confront their failures in everyday life. We need only a reminder when they appear on television or in a public forum. I suggest a lapel pin (where they used to wear the American flag) with the bright red letter W.

W is for wrong. Wear it proudly or remain silent. Either way the public interest will be served.

Meantime, call off the dogs and let Tiger tend to his own life. He has brought shame upon himself but he does not deserve a constant drubbing from a media that has its own burdens to bear.

Jazz.

“Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand” by David Barstow, New York Times, April 20, 2008.

“How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” by Paul Krugman, New York Times Magazine, September 2, 2009.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). A COLUMNIST FOR THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, WORLD EDITION, HIS CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Remembering Howard Zinn: August 24 1922 – January 27 2010

2010-01-30T14:07:00.000-08:00

Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States," died Wednesday at the age of 87.

Adapted from the Harper Collins Summary: Howard Zinn was a historian, playwright, and social activist. He was a shipyard worker and Air Force bombardier before he went to college under the GI Bill and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He taught at Spelman College and Boston University, and was a visiting professor at the University of Paris and the University of Bologna. He received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. He lived in Auburndale, Massachusetts.

“He was the best human being I've ever known. The best example of what a human can be, and can do with their life.”

Daniel Ellsberg

“I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice and unfairness wherever he found it. What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities should have the same rights as whites, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?”

Bob Herbert (NY Times)

"He's made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture. He's changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect. He was a person of real courage and integrity, warmth and humor.”

Noam Chomsky

"Howard had a great mind and was one of the great voices in the American political life. He taught me how valuable -- how necessary -- dissent was to democracy and to America itself. He taught that history was made by the everyman, not the elites. I was lucky enough to know him personally and I will carry with me what I learned from him -- and try to impart it to my own children -- in his memory."

Ben Affleck

"Howard had a genius for the shape of public morality and for articulating the great alternative vision of peace as more than a dream. But above all, he had a genius for the practical meaning of love. [He was] simply one of the greatest Americans of our time. He will not be replaced -- or soon forgotten.”

James Carroll (Boston Globe)

“Zinn's brand of history put common citizens at the center of the story and inspired generations of young activists and academics to remember that change is possible.”

Peter Rothberg (The Nation)

“Zinn's influence will live on in the great power of his words, and the courage and modesty with which he lived his life.”

Victoria Brittain (The Guardian)

"From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it.”

Howard Zinn

“Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it's been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn't just moan. They worked, they acted, they organised, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that's what we have to do today."

Howard Zinn

"My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you."

Howard Zinn

Random Note: When I made plans to publish the Jazzman Chronicles I sought the comments and support of America’s two pre-eminent progressives: Chomsky and Zinn. Zinn replied that he did not have time to read my work but encouraged me to keep writing. When I pressed him to comment on a short essay entitled True History he replied “… a succinct and heartfelt statement about the importance of teaching good history to the new generation.” He was and is a hero who fought the good fight to the end of his days and I will always be grateful.

Jazz.

Beatlick Travel Report 2010: Marfa TX

2010-01-30T12:48:00.000-08:00

Date: Jan 30, 2010 11:18 AM

Marfa, Texas

While we were visiting in Fort Stockton Beatlick Joe and I were really impressed by Marfa’s public radio station KRTS 93.5 “radio for a wide range,” so we decided to stop for the weekend and check out some of the activities mentioned on the air. We had spent a cold night in Marathon with freezing rain that left the van coated in ice so we were grateful to see clouds in the vast sky break up and the temperature rise as we drove the 60 mile stretch into the Marfa Plateau.

We have passed through Marfa a number of times traveling down Highway 90 on our destinations elsewhere. Staying on that route the place looked like so many other hard-luck scenes in Texas, we really thought it was a little one-trick pony town touting its mystery lights, not unlike Roswell, cashing in on a local phenomenon.

We passed by the Marfa Lights Viewing Center nine miles from town. We judge that a good place to park overnight sometime. Native inhabitants were aware of Marfa’s mysterious lights long before the first recording of them back in 1883. The whole concept is so popular now that the town provides this accommodating viewing station and a festival on Labor Day weekend.

It was only after we pulled off of 90 and ventured closer into the heart of town that we saw how truly unique and interesting Marfa is. We urban camped right beside the Paisano Hotel which had a great bar, fireplace and wonderful big old bathrooms off of the lobby where you can lock yourself in for complete privacy and enjoy a big sink with lots of hot water. We haven’t had it this good since the Bisbee library in Arizona. The hotel hosts a large display of memorabilia from the movie “Giant.” Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean and Rock Hudson all spent time there and left behind their autographed photos.

We strolled around and enjoyed the beautiful buildings, coffee shops and art galleries all looking neatly spruced up and tidy. Our itinerary included KRTS, the Marfa Book Company, and Ballroom Marfa where an international film project was holding a reception. What an interesting crowd showed up. There seems to be a large draw of young people from Sul Ross University less than 30 miles away in Alpine. The art scene is huge here and we spoke to so many young people who have moved here from Boston, Austin , Berlin, you name it.

Apparently Donald Judd laid the foundation for the town’s heavy art scene in the mid-1970s when he established the Chinati Foundation, which today houses a permanent collection of contemporary art as well as temporary exhibits by artists in residence. One night on Marfa Radio they were interviewing two Germans who came to Marfa and created an art installation by taking apart an entire automobile and reconstructing it into two bicycles.

The “Art in the Auditorium” at Ballroom Marfa is a global collaboration between museums and art spaces in Italy, Norway, Turkey, Argentina, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. There were two large rooms with short films by seven up and coming filmmakers. One of the film directors was in attendance, Aida Ruilova. Her seven-minute short “Meet the Eye,” was filmed on a sound stage in Los Angeles and featured Karen Black of “Easy Rider” fame and LA artist Raymond Pettibon.

Black is expressing her anxieties to the male lead about her futile struggle to remember something. Pettibon is secretly carving a peephole in the wall. When Black does look through the hole she sees a scene of death, which ironically is the thing she is trying to remember. It’s pretty abstract as Truelove’s work is critiqued to be. The plot could be deciphered as the actor meeting herself in that dreamlike dimension. The petite former punk rocker said to her knowledge Marfa was the only town in America hosting the international collaboration.

“Dead Forest (Storm) by Charley Nijensohn of Buenos Aires was my personal favorite, totally surreal and I couldn’t figure out how in the world it was shot. Filmed in the Amazon Basin where the plight of the area’s deforestation is well documented a man is standing unprotected on a small floating craft, not much bigger than a log. It is pouring down rain and all you hear is the downpour with the visual of the man floating through a flooded landscape of blackened dead tree stumps. The relentless rain robs the scene of any color and the man drifts so precariously perched on his tiny craft, pummeled by the precipitation, as endangered as the rain forest.

We will stay the weekend and head on to El Paso. I have an appointment with an endodontist to get a root canal. Apparently I am such a unique and special person that I have grown four roots from my problem tooth instead of the usual three. So it is this fourth one which requires a root canal. I wish I could use these odds to work in my favor in Las Vegas.

So we completely changed our plans and won’t be back at Astor Park in the Big Bend area until March and April. Then we will continue our ultimate survival camp experience. In the meantime we will go to Truth or Consequences where we hope to park at the Artesian Hot Springs for a month. You can do that for only $125 with a discount on the hot baths and access to electricity. That sounds pretty plush to us.

Happy Trails

Beatlick Pamela

Boston Alarm Redux

2010-01-28T21:37:00.001-08:00

The alarm goes off and a procession of skulls materialize ahead of the engine. Handing out tickets to the destruction, they're followed by the curious and together they gather as the house falls in on itself. Screams, you can't hear them anymore. Three alarm, four? How many engines need to respond? Pull the body out through the window even if the skin pulls away? This is democracy in action. We don't mind to see the sausage made, we don't care if the blood gets into the ground. The table is set and its no longer an indoor sport.

Gathering to vote we pass one another and curse the voting line. Its more interesting to watch on television. Download a copy of the Bill of Rights in pdf. Your elected officials are just like the bull in the china shop and you are the smallest crystal cup. But you like it this way. Its only a crisis of conscious if everyone around you says they will agree. Foreign aid will take your job away but it won't stop you from filling your life with goods from China. Made in America was never going to make it past the parking lot. You used to be a card carrying hypocrite until like so many other words you forgot the meaning while you were in line to look away.

Chris Mansel

Boston Alarm

2010-01-25T21:33:00.000-08:00

If the ruling party fails to heed the warning sounded by the senatorial special election in Massachusetts then the midterm elections will be a massacre. If the only lessons learned are the need to retool the message or the necessity of hand-to-hand campaigning, then the party is deaf to the cry of the people and therefore fundamentally incapable of governing.

Frankly we don’t care what the message is any more as long as jobs are being delivered yesterday. Frankly we don’t want to shake hands with any candidate. We just want to know that she or he is working for us and not the multi-billion dollar corporations that finance the bulk of all political campaigns.

For a year we have waited for something positive to come out of Washington and the ruling party gave us a Wall Street bailout and a healthcare package so brutalized it was hard to tell who wrote it: corporate lawyers or Washington lobbyists.

When you don’t have a job you really don’t care about healthcare insurance and the last thing you want to hear is mandatory coverage. Is there anyone listening?

SUPREME COURT BETRAYAL: DEMOCRACY LOST

2010-01-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE: DISSEMINATE FREELY.

By Jack Random

“The court’s primary function will be to strike back government regulation of private business at every turn. Anti-trust law is dead. Environmental law is rendered toothless. Regulation of essential industries -- energy, water and food -- is barely breathing. Security reigns supreme over individual liberties and the only rights that count are corporate.”

“Blame the Democrats and Move On: The Federalist Court.” Jazzman Chronicles, July 20, 2005.

“It would be impossible to understate the dangers that corporate dominance poses to democracy. Corporate democracy is an oxymoron. It cannot exist. It is an unconscionable perversion of democracy.”

“As the World Turns: America Left Behind.” Jazzman Chronicles, September 6, 2009.

........

As a progressive libertarian independent the events of the week were enough to send me into a tailspin of despair. No, it was not the Massachusetts senatorial race, which I found rich in irony and something of a mixed blessing. No, it was not the precipitous decline in the stock market, which served to remind us that that brokers and bankers are far more afraid of populist rage than they are of any mainstream political party.

No, it was rather the boldest assertion to date that the Supreme Court of Chief Justice John Roberts has one and only one defining characteristic: Corporate bias.

History informs us that there is perhaps no form of government more vulnerable to corporate takeover than a democracy in which there are no controls on the funding of political campaigns. Knowing this, there is no democracy in the western world that allows unlimited corporate funding. Knowing this, our Supreme Court delivered a ruling that allows just that with one caveat: corporations cannot contribute directly to political parties or candidates. It is a curious exception in that it seems to confess that the court’s reasoning is flawed. If corporations are in effect citizens, entitled to the rights of individuals, on what grounds should they be denied direct engagement?

It is however an exception that has no teeth. Corporations do not need to contribute directly to parties or candidates. They are fully capable of running their own political operations. They can operate their own focus groups. They can use their resources, even those gained from public bailouts, to tip the balance of power and control the policies of government.

We’ve grown accustomed to hyperbole from pundits and politicians but this time it is real. Democracy can be compromised only so far before it ceases to be democracy. In this case the alternative our Supreme Court has thrust us toward is corporate fascism not unlike Mussolini’s Italy, a government that found nothing objectionable in Hitler’s Third Reich. It was only business.

In the bold new world the court has laid out for us the electoral process will become a mere formality as it is in Russia or Iran. It will become a ritual to commemorate the democracy we once treasured. In this new world neither the people, the mom and pop corporations nor the unions will hold any sway, though this ruling applies to them as well, for they cannot compete with the power of the almighty dollar that corporate monoliths bring to bear.

Leaders of the Republican Party have embraced this decision and never fail to include the unions in their analysis. Yet the labor unions are a red herring. After half a century of decline, there is no union in the land that can compete with any major corporation. By this ruling union influence is rendered negligible and corporate power reigns supreme.

Among the many questions that remain unanswered are the international implications. The modern corporation is an international leviathan with tentacles extending across borders in every direction. It has no loyalties, no patriotism, no ideology, no principles and no virtue. It is governed by the profit margin, plain and simple. If selling out the workers of America (by exporting jobs and banishing the rights of labor) will boost the profit margin, it is not a decision that will be contested.

The corporate behemoths may allow Barack Obama to continue as president, they may allow the major parties to exist, but with this ruling the nation just got a charter for a new board of directors that will replace all branches of government as the ultimate arbiter of decisions. If any member of congress, Senator or President violates the dictums of the corporate masters, they will be targeted for extinction. In that sense the parties themselves will become irrelevant. All parties will become agents of corporate interest.

For as long as this decision is allowed to stand we are no longer a democracy.

It must not be allowed to stand and yet overturning a Supreme Court decision is a daunting task. Among the courses of action suggested thus far, none shows any real promise of success. Amending the constitution requires two thirds of congress and three quarters of the states. Removing the majority members of the court for treason, however justified, would require an overwhelming push by congress. As long as Republicans remain convinced that corporate dominance is to their advantage it cannot happen.

Perhaps Congressman Barney Frank, who noted that corporations are creations of law, offered the most interesting approach. Corporations are granted corporate status by the government and the government retains the right to enforce standards and regulations. It is therefore possible that congress can control the power of corporations through corporate law rather than campaign finance law.

There are at least two major obstacles to this approach. First, congress has not been able to pass re-regulation of the financial institutions even after the lack of regulation played a primary role in a near catastrophic collapse. How are we to believe that congress will act in this case even as the minority party throws up a roadblock of united opposition?

The dismal truth is congress is paralyzed. While some may give lip service to the necessity of systemic change, there is no real movement toward striking down the filibuster rule in the United States Senate. As long as the filibuster remains there can be no real change.

Even if we could get beyond systemic paralysis, any effective legislative attempt to undo what the Supreme Court has done would surely be struck down by the same court.

Those of us who believe in democracy must continue to fight but it seems to me we must also recognize reality. In all likelihood we are stuck with this decision until the balance of the court is altered. The way things are going it could be decades and by that time the nature of congress and the White House could be so altered that change may be impossible.

Once lost, the road back to democracy is paved with hardship.

That is the problem with Supreme Court decisions. They have the power to alter the very heart and soul of a nation.

So welcome to the corporate world: We are up against the wall, rifles pointed at our chests, and our only remaining choice is whether to be blindfolded or to confront our destiny with open eyes.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). A COLUMNIST FOR THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, WORLD EDITION, HIS CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Beatlick Travel Report 2010: Survival Camp

2010-01-17T11:13:00.000-08:00

Date: Jan 16, 2010 3:11 PM

Fort Stockton:

The Beatlicks are in a small holding pattern in Fort Stockton before we can set up our winter camp in Study Butte, out where the coyotes howl and the wind blows free. We are in Neil’s trailer, heading to Neil’s 40 acres, but first I’m going to have to attend to a dental problem and get a passport photo and application off.

We anticipate at least six weeks in the wild so to speak and I am stocking up. My Mama is laughing so hard at me right now, up in heaven. I just bought a 20-pound bag of pinto beans. I used to turn my nose up at my mother’s beans and now I’m going to live on beans and oatmeal. I am ashamed of myself now for the snooty way I would criticize her beans, called them “peasant food.” I guess now I am a peasant.

The trailer in Fort Stockton doesn’t offer many creature comforts so it makes a good transition for outdoor camping. There’s no running water so we have to haul buckets of water in from a spigot outdoors, we have to fill the toilet up every time we flush. We are also cooking on the camp stove. We are in a small bedroom with a bed, the cook stove, two chairs, DVD, computer, MP3 player, and plenty of books and movies from the Fort Stockton Library.

We have seen the property in Study Butte and it is great, we can’t wait to get out there. But I will have to find some dental assistance first, I can’t imagine sticking myself out there for six weeks with no access to help if I should need it.

One friend has asked me why in the world we are doing this. One reason is to save money. We are trying to save money for plane fare to Ouxaca. A friend in Las Cruces has told us where he stays for $250 a month. That is a serious goal for us this year if we can keep down expenses and save.

Plus I think it’s a fun experiment to blog about being out in the wilderness camping. I am spending more time with survivalists and this is a group of people who genuinely believe something catastrophic is going to happen to our country and we will have to fend for ourselves. That peaks my imagination.

Neil’s brother Henry lives out in Study Butte already and works in a Bentonite mine. That is what some Kitty Litter is made of mostly. It clumps up around moisture. Neil’s whole property is just about Bentonite. So if it rains there is a real problem, as it did a few days ago we heard. Henry has to park two miles out by the road and walk to his camp if it rains. So we will make sure it is all dried out back there before we head out.

So our Survival Camp is all about getting in a situation where we don’t need to spend much money and testing ourselves against the elements. We have this wonderful friend who can offer us such a unique opportunity. Why not go for it?

Happy Trails

Beatlick Pamela (publishingpamela@yahoo.com)

2010 Beatlick Travel Report: Survival Camp

2010-01-12T16:38:00.000-08:00

Date: Jan 12, 2010 10:21 AM

We hit the road for Fort Stockton and our good friend Neil Astor's house last week. We will be moving onto his forty acres in Study Butte as soon as this polar front moves out of town. We got to go see the property on Sunday and it is pretty spectacular in its starkness. Windswept, open land amidst the Chisos Mountain range and many more I don't know by name yet. The sunsets are absolutely spectacular. The goal is to go in and survive for six weeks off the grid.

It's an experiment just to test our mettle and save a few bucks. Imagine, if you got off work one day and someone told you you can't go home. Imagine everything you knew and understood was taken from you - electricity, gas, water. What would you do?

Well we're about to find out. I was comforted to know that Neil's brother is already living on the property. He works in a mine 30 miles away and has a campsite with a travel trailer. I think I would be a little more intimidated if he weren't there. At least he knows the ropes.

Once I get my van in there, if I get my van in there, for there is one really step hill and more than a few intimidating ravines to cross, then it will stay parked till we come out. One time in, one time out, is the plan. The store three miles away has wi-fi so we can stay in touch but the prices on food are prohibitive. The best grocery store is five miles away, but hopefully Neil's brother Henry will give us a ride from time to time.

Now on this imaginary doomsday scenario that I am modeling after I do have a few obvious advantages. I have the luxury of preparing and tomorrow, the 13th of Jan., we will be stocking up on dry goods. I have a shopping list and more survival tips coming to the third page of my website. It's not up yet but will be soon. I'm having fun thinking about what to buy and how to make it all last. The basics are coffee, oatmeal, powdered milk, pinto beans, rice, trail mix, crackers, raisins, boullion, brown suger, and peanut butter all in bulk. So much for the low-carb diet that helped me lose 40 pounds. But I guess if the store is five miles away that might prove itself to not be a problem!

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

David Alfaro Siqueiros in America

2010-01-10T17:33:00.000-08:00

....

the same building, different days, like a photograph
compressed in the retna waiting to be born
a montage in a dream where all else disappears
but the building itself
always half-light, red structured brick
double-doors closed

when I was approached by madness at a young
age, I saw my breath before me as a great stone
wall to write upon
an agitation so obscure
perishable only for the throat
holding back the darker blood
to capture the dusk

Chris Mansel

No Background To The Sun

2010-01-04T11:40:00.000-08:00

....

a body stretched over a broken window
not through but over, the frame of the window
and the pane is on the ground, the blood
of the victim has been stepped on, the memory
of the event wasn't captured in a photograph
until eyes blinked on the first approach

dust is blown up in the air and slowly, slowly
settles and mixes with the blood and glass
under a microscope, unless its a good
microscope will not show the design or how it
changed the DNA, the glass will eventually
be collected and thrown away, it won't be
analyzed, its just a body

a body scarred with glass, deep cuts,
not incisions, once rigor mortis sets in the dialogue
is lost, Don't believe.

Chris Mansel

Shame and Pride in America

2009-12-15T18:14:00.000-08:00

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

By Jack Random

It is a great shame that in America we cannot criticize our nation without being painted in the colors of betrayal and treason by the self-righteous and self-proclaimed defenders of American pride. Yes, even those who only yesterday led the nation to the edge of economic collapse and left our reputation torn and tattered before the eyes of the world retain their hold on power by defining patriotism with unwavering praise and effectively denouncing anyone who does not adhere.

So it is that our president on the occasion of his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize assumed the role of head cheerleader – a role better suited to his predecessor than to the candidate who succeeded on the promise of change.

It is a role that seemingly every president must assume yet to have embraced it so soon and on such an ironic occasion is deeply disappointing.

I cannot and would not deny that America historically has accomplished much for which we can be rightfully proud. Aside from very limited experiments in democratic rule, America gave birth to the modern republic. In our short history we have moved closer to the democratic ideal by expanding the electorate to include the landless, minorities and women. We have made advances in civil rights and civil liberties. We have fought for the rights of labor and against corporate monopolies when their powers grew so pervasive that they threatened the very heart of the republic. We have spilled American blood to defeat the imperialist-fascist dictatorships of Japan, Italy and Nazi Germany. We have fought back that peculiar form of elitist oligarchy that was known by the name of communist socialism. At times in our history we have stood strong in the cause of human rights and advanced the cause of science. We have eased the burden on the elderly with Social Security and Medicare. Against a backdrop of racial discrimination, we have elected an American of African heritage president. As in the recent $3.4 billion settlement with the indigenous tribes of North America, we have upheld the rule of law even at great cost.

For all this and more we can rightly be proud but there is a darker side to our history that we can neither ignore nor rationalize if we wish to realize the promise of our founding. It was that darker side that was oddly missing in our president’s skewed rendering of history before the Nobel audience in Oslo, Norway.

In compensation for our president’s omissions, in the interests of humility, honesty and justice, I offer the following sources of American shame. I offer them not to build a case against our nation but to direct us toward a better nation and one that will contribute to a better world.

First and foremost, all honest Americans know, despite centuries of misinformation and indoctrination, that our nation was born in something resembling original sin. When our European ancestors arrived on American shores they did not find a continent free of inhabitants. Some tribes were warlike and some were not but they were as proud of their cultural heritage and social order as we are today. They had not developed industry but rather formed a covenant with the land. They lived in harmony with their surroundings, respected the animals that shared it, and survived in relative peace. When the Europeans arrived with their industry and modern weapons, they claimed the land and methodically cleared it of its former inhabitants. When they could not eradicate all of the people, they killed the buffalo and cut off all means of survival, effectively accomplishing the same goal. The Euro-Americans called it Manifest Destiny. History calls it Genocide.

We have never made just reparations for this crime against humanity or for the crime of slavery and the recent settlement (compensation for cheating the tribes out of their allotments for stolen resources) is but one small step in that direction. That the surviving American Indians and descendants of African slaves have lived in dire poverty all these years is the enduring shame of our nation.

The magnitude of these crimes is so enormous they can never be set right but they must be acknowledged as a part of our heritage. They must serve to remind us what horrors can be committed when a people are incapable of admitting fault. We must constantly strive to ease the burden of those who suffered for our wrongs. For the Native American community, freeing Leonard Peltier before his death would be a meaningful symbol of contrition. For the African American community, Obama is the symbol and rebuilding our crumbling cities and the infrastructure that serves them would help.

In the critical area of foreign policy our president proclaimed our nation the defender of liberty for the last six decades. Well, at least he is not defending the Spanish-American War and the subsequent occupation of the Philippines. For the record, the peoples of Indochina, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa might take issue with that characterization. Certainly, the president has admitted in the past that Vietnam was a mistake. I would go further: It was an unnecessary, immoral and unwise war that cost as many as three million Southeast Asian as well as 58,000 American lives. Were we defending liberty in Vietnam or were we standing up a corrupt government in an ideological war? Were we defending liberty in Chile when we deposed Salvador Allende in favor of military strongman Augusto Pinochet? Were we defending liberty in Iran when we overthrew the most democratic government that region had ever known and elevated the ruthless Shah? As for Iraq, does this president really believe that the first Gulf War was justified on moral grounds? Or is he rather yielding to that historical analysis that proclaims the righteousness of the victor?

The truth is we have often fought on the wrong side for the wrong reasons. The truth is we have used other nations as the battlefield in a mission to impose our will and to expand our influence to the realm of empire.

For a nation that holds its esteem in the principles of justice and democracy, much of our history is a source of shame and one that we have only begun to address. But our shame (or rather that for which we should be ashamed) does not end with history. It lives on in a myriad of ways.

When all of Europe, a diverse group of nations if ever there was one, agrees on a moral imperative, it is highly probable that they are right. All of Europe agrees that affordable healthcare is a fundamental right. That America has not achieved that fundamental understanding of human rights is a source of shame. That we continue to debate the virtues of government involvement in healthcare while our private, profit motivated healthcare industry deprives coverage and charges excessive fees is less an indication of our independence than it is a sign of the failure of our democracy. It is the basic role of government to provide for the needs of its people. If we cannot provide healthcare then we have failed and we should be ashamed.

All of Europe agrees that the death penalty is an abomination and an abuse of the power of the state. That we stand alone among civilized nations in imposing capitol punishment, even as evidence emerges that our system of justice is fraught with error and literally thousands have wrongly been put to death, is another source of shame.

That our current administration has continued the policies of secrecy, mass surveillance, and detention without just cause or adjudication is shameful.

That our president has failed to explicitly repudiate the Bush Doctrine of aggressive, unilateral war is shameful. The president’s unwavering supporters may rightfully argue that his Afghanistan policy has not changed but his remarks in Oslo defending unilateral war without deference to diplomacy was a departure from the candidate so many of us chose to support.

If I were a member of the committee that chose to bestow the Nobel Peace Prize on this president, I would be shaken to the core.

America is a proud nation. That is what makes us a great nation when we are on the side of justice, when we are fighting for the good and the oppressed. It is also what makes us horrific when we take the wrong path. We are a nation that can never admit mistakes. We are a nation that to this day adheres to the maxim: might makes right.

Until we are prepared to accept our flaws and the errors of our way we will never achieve the greatness we desire. As the wise have always attested: True greatness lies in humility.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

OBAMA’S WATERLOO: THE AFGHAN LIE

2009-12-05T12:59:00.000-08:00

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

By Jack Random

“As Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”

“Under the banner of … domestic unity and international legitimacy - and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden - we sent our troops into Afghanistan. Within a matter of months, al Qaeda was scattered and many of its operatives were killed.”

President Barack Obama, West Point, December 1, 2009.

In August 1964 President Lyndon Johnson reported to congress that the North Vietnamese had attacked an American war ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. It was the lie that gave Johnson legal authority to escalate the Vietnam War.

In August 1990 President George Herbert Walker Bush pointedly and repeatedly refused to inform Saddam Hussein that an invasion into neighboring Kuwait would be considered an act of aggression that would result in an American military response. It was the lie that launched the first Gulf War that would inevitably lead to the second.

On October 7, 2001, the ruling government of Afghanistan offered to try Osama bin Laden in an Islamic Court. The offer was summarily rejected and the bombing of Afghanistan commenced. On October 14, 2001, the Taliban offered to surrender bin Laden and Al Qaeda operatives to a third country upon submitted evidence of their involvement in the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. The government of the United States refused and the war proceeded as planned.

In March 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the massive bombing of Iraq on the basis of fabricated evidence of weapons of mass destruction and nefarious connections to Al Qaeda and the September 11 attack, after the United Nations Security refused to sanction the cause of war. These were the lies that initiated the Iraq War.

When a war begins with a lie or a perversion of the truth, it is doomed to an end that will punish the aggressor nation and tarnish its reputation in world affairs for generations to come.

On December 1, 2009, President Barack Obama, after eight years of a failed occupation, initiated the second phase of the American Afghan War with a creative perversion of the truth. For while it may in some sense be true that we did not invade Afghanistan until after the Taliban offered to turn over Osama bin Laden, the greater truth is that we ignored all offers to negotiate the trial of bin Laden and Al Qaeda for a cause of war that was predetermined.

We now know that the administration of George W. Bush planned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq before the September 11 attack. For the Obama administration to pretend now that we had no choice but to bomb them back to the Stone Age is to ignore history and to continue a disgraceful legacy of dishonesty and deception.

The truth is that the Taliban, as despicable and primitive as it may be, was not responsible for the September 11 attack. The truth is that the Taliban inherited Al Qaeda and the Mujahideen from the CIA in the aftermath of the failed Soviet occupation. The truth is Afghanistan was never a righteous or necessary war. It was a war of choice or if you prefer a war mandated by the nation’s profound grief in the aftermath of September 11.

The truth is that we had a choice but we had the wrong man as president.

Imagine for a moment that we had engaged the government of Afghanistan. Imagine that those negotiations resulted in the arrest and trial of Osama bin Laden and the perpetrators of the September 11 attack before an international tribunal. Bin Laden and his co-conspirators would likely not be free today and the remnants of Al Qaeda would have dissolved as the international pariahs they were and are.

Our aggressive wars, killing innocent civilians and punishing whole nations for the crimes of a few, gave these criminals legitimacy and reduced America to a criminal nation.

Tragically, we cannot turn back the pages but neither can we ignore historical truths and hope to change the course of events.

Our president now claims that the war in Afghanistan is in our “vital national interest.” He is wrong. For while we have interests in that war torn nation, the threat of Al Qaeda has already been reduced to a manageable minimum and the Taliban can reach no further than the tribal regions of the Afghan-Pakistan border. Neither poses a direct threat to the United States or its allies.

It is naïve to think that the Taliban or its radical Islamic allies can capture by aggressive action the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan. The most powerful force in the region is Pakistani intelligence and its military partners. Owing in no small part to our mindless and irresponsible actions, the government of Pakistan is weak but the military remains strong. The only real threat to the Pakistani weapons is that which arises from within. We cannot reduce that threat by our military actions. Indeed, we can only exacerbate the situation.

What was missing from our president’s address was any real and tangible mention of a diplomatic initiative engaging the regional powers. Absent that initiative there is little we can do to improve the security of the region.

Some choose to embrace the 18-month timeline for American withdrawal but it seems to me a misguided hope for the president has premised withdrawal to conditions on the ground. We have heard this language before. We heard it in Iraq and we heard it in Vietnam. Indeed, we heard it from the Soviets in Afghanistan.

In eighteen months we will confront more or less the same circumstance we face today. If it is in the “vital” interest of the nation, as our president has already determined, then we will have no choice but to continue and escalate as the military commanders request.

Consider the motivation of our sponsored Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, the warlord of Kabul: He owes his position of leadership to our money and power. Since he knows we will withdraw if all goes well, it serves his purpose to see to it that it does not go well. For Karzai’s hopelessly corrupt government, it becomes a game of showing some signs of progress while maintaining a precarious balance of vulnerability. For his rivals and the tribal leaders, they will play it to their own advantage.

It will go on for years and years until we finally decide it is no longer in our “vital” interest. In fact, it never was.

The world is full of danger. We do not possess the power to eliminate all threats or to invade all nations that do not share our view of the world. We can only hope to protect our own people to the extent possible and to move the world in a better direction. Aggressive war and occupation can never accomplish these goals. Only reasoned diplomacy can. War and military action must always be reserved to the most essential circumstances.

The war in Afghanistan (like the war in Iraq) is neither essential nor vital to our national interests. We should not be surprised by our president’s policy. He gave fair warning in his presidential campaign. But he is wrong and we must persuade him that the best way out of this bottomless pit is an orderly and conditioned withdrawal.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). A COLUMNIST FOR THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, WORLD EDITION, HIS CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

[Random Note: My latest novel "Hard Times" is being posted on Slush Pile reader -- an experiment in publishing.]

CHRIS MANSEL & JAKE BERRY: A DIALOGUE

2009-11-28T13:15:00.000-08:00

A Dialogue with Jake Berry by Chris Mansel (2008).

[Editor's Note: This exchange features two of the most creative contemporary minds I’ve encountered. No one rejects convention more thoroughly than Mansel and no one of the unconventional creative bent is better read or more informed than Berry. Both are writers and artists of singular character – in the uniqueness of their pluralities. If there is a better source on the creative process, I am not aware of it. Jazz.]

[Chris Mansel: Any conversation for me with my friend Jake Berry is a learning experience and a gift I do not take lightly. I was again fortunate to ask Jake questions for the third time and the answers speak for themselves.]

Chris Mansel: If the Buddha were standing out in the rain would you invite him in, or go outside and stand with him?

Jake Berry: I'd invite him in to help me tear the roof off my house.

Chris Mansel: If your creativity is the medicine you are prescribed, then is the diagnosis running parallel or controlling the ship on troubled seas?

Jake Berry: You know how to load a question. I think of how they found Nietzsche mumbling to himself over his papers. He never said much after that though he lived many years in silence. Or Holderlin pacing in circles all night, jotting down notes, some of them brilliant fragments, and playing violin, or was it flute, that according to some who heard it was quite beautiful. Yet it is obvious from people who spent long periods in his company that he was suffering greatly, quite mad, relative to the times anyway. He lived another 40 years deteriorating.

I know that working more or less every day at one creative pursuit or another keeps me from going to Wal-Mart, buying a shotgun and shells and having a go at the place with both barrels until the cops and media arrive and spoil my fun. Some of us are afflicted with this thing. The nerves are calmed for a moment after you write or speak/sing a poem, write a song, play a musical instrument, paint, draw. It has been this way since I was a child. Artaud said no one ever did any of these things except to get out of hell. He would know. He spent enough time there.

At the same time it can be extremely hard work - grueling, obsessive day after day. Insomnia from dwelling on a piece so intensely it won't leave you rest. Knowing that even your most inspired effort is probably doomed to failure, even by, perhaps especially by, your own standards. I know you suffer from migraines, seizures and so forth that seem connected to your work. But then once you really commit to this thing everything is connected to it.

What I try to do, with actually a small degree of success, is keep my ego out of it. Out of my feelings about the work, out of how others react to it, and out of dominating the work as the central voice.

Most creation tales begin in chaos, the void, or some similar unknown. So it is. We stumble around in the dark. Those who practice any of the arts and believe they know what they are doing are utter fools. If I have learned anything, it's how to recognize a fool. I have a great deal of experience in the art of foolishness, where practice does not make perfect, but only makes one more foolish.

Chris Mansel: If destructiveness is in the chemical makeup, does it come from the same component as creativity, or do they operate individually off of one another further down the line?

Jake Berry: I don't see how they cannot be interwoven. Creation and destruction seem to be part of the same process of change. Since nothing is permanent we can see the change as either the destruction of what has disappeared or the creation of something new. When we bring intent into consideration we can discuss whether creation is the result of intention to make something new or destroy something previously present. Further than this we can discuss particular instances of creation and destruction.

Let me answer then with a question to you. Are your films a destruction of the images from which they originally drive or are [they] pure creations in which the original image is merely the ore, the raw substance to be shaped in a particular way? To what extent is the end result predetermined or left to chance?

Chris Mansel: The images are deconstructed in such a way as to bring out the image beneath the surface. What you refer to as pure creations is left to modifying or using the software in such a way as to bring about a new surface of the canvas, a painting over if you will. Everything was left to chance until I saw the image and I would then go back and correct it or take the muddy approach and let the muck fly where it lay. When I started working with your Brambu recording I began a whole new process of working towards the text and an evolution began that as you often say, “Developed delightfully stranger and newer life forms.” In other words I did things that I didn’t know I could do until I did them. My latest film The Dead Illume is a perfect example of this.

Your blog Notes, Quotes, Ideas, Speculations hasn’t been posted on in three years and this is a fascinating piece of work. I wonder if you have any plans to expand it into a book length project in the future.

Jake Berry: There was a train of thought I was working with there and I still want to develop it, but I have been distracted by other projects. I intended the site as a place to post more or less random philosophical bits and pieces. So perhaps I will return to it that way then pursue the longer piece by weaving it in and out of the rest.

You say above, "I did things I didn't know I could do until I did them." That seems to be the most appropriate way to work. In my experience if I understand where a piece of whatever kind is going before I start it doesn't remain interesting for very long. The whole point of this kind of practice is discovery. The thing that surprised me the most was the quality of the work you were doing with a computer camera and free software. There are directors working with budgets of millions of dollars who devour hours of our time and do not give us anything. You on the other hand open entire worlds of imagination with no budget and asking only two-five minutes of our time. Do you intend to continue working with this approach or would you like to eventually use professional cameras and software?

Chris Mansel: Of course I would like to use more sophisticated equipment and turn it on its side in the same manner. But I don’t foresee it happening. One reason is funding. I just don’t see any way I would have access to the kind of equipment you are talking about. Another reason I don’t think it will happen is because it would be the natural progression of things and that just hasn’t been the way my life has worked out.

In Arthur Janov's book, Primal Scream, he writes, "E. H. Hess, investigating pupillary contraction and dilation in response to certain stimuli, found that the pupil dilates when the stimulus is pleasant and contracts when it is unpleasant." If this is true would not a nation be so seized in its view to generally accept any thing that was thrown at them?

Jake Berry: I suppose that's true if what was thrown at them was pleasant. At least that portion that was paying attention. I think the manipulation of a populace has to go further than the autonomic response. It has to strike at that level, but it also must engage the intellect in some way. And of course pleasure is only one response that can be manipulated. We have seen how populations respond to fear, and how fear can be used to coerce populations into believing things that would otherwise seem unreasonable. It's part of the way those in power convince the majority to conform. The real power always lies with the majority. If the great majority of a population truly does not wish to do something, then it does not have to, but this requires a kind of solidarity we rarely see in large populations. Usually the struggle for resources and other divisions like ethnicity, religion, race, and so forth prevent solidarity, and that is exactly the way the most powerful individuals in any society would like to keep it. Only a few can be rich, otherwise having wealth would be pointless. In a capitalist society, wealth is power and those in power do not wish to lose it. So the manipulation begins.

Where does art fall in all of this? We know that it can be used as a tool for manipulation, but we also see that people with no power at all the world over make art. If the populace in general becomes more concerned with aesthetics than with consumption, the facsimile of wealth, will that populace become less subject to manipulation?

What I mean is concerned with making art, not just passively observing or consuming art products.

Chris Mansel: Art becomes the transparency that can be lifted up and placed anywhere at will. Commercial art has taken upon itself to balance out the scales of madness to borrow a song title from you. Having no power you can still make commercial art, anything feeds the eye, it’s the pineal blues these days. The false Buddha is everywhere. It is more important now to be the bug than the botanist, to be the moth than the flame; to be seen is the new orgasm, the new sexual technique. Cesare Lombroso wrote in 1899, “The atavism of the criminal when he lacks absolutely every trace of shame and pity, may go back beyond the savage even to the brutes themselves.”

I would like to ask you about a song entitled “So Many Birds.” This is a very dramatic recording. Could you talk about the song and the writing and why you placed it as the last track on your new album Liminal Blue?

Jake Berry: "So Many Birds" was I think the last song I wrote for the set. I think I wrote 15 songs during the period, 11 ended up on the album. I was about to change the tuning on the guitar when I hit a chord that felt like a door opening - one of those moments when you hear a whole song unfolding out of a single chord. The tuning is one I use often because it has so many possibilities. I never seem to fall into a rut with it. The low E string is tuned down to B and it goes on from there to F sharp, B, E, A, E. I found it a few years ago fooling around, looking for new tunings, then discovered later that Joni Mitchell had used it on several albums, including Turbulent Indigo, one of my favorites.

That's probably why it made sense to me. It's easy to get 13th and 11th chords in this tuning, so the harmonics are fairly broad. The first part of the song works out of an F sharp minor 13, so the melody is a minor modality, a darker, more dramatic feel. The second section of the song moves to A major, and F sharp minor is the relative minor to A, so you get what Leonard Cohen calls, in "Hallelujah", the "major lift." But it eventually resolves back to the minor. This was a case where the words flowed out of the music. They came to me as I was working out the chords and melody.

It happened fairly quickly. When I went to record it, all the parts seemed to come quickly as well. There is one idea that I got from listening to the first Portishead album. I noticed in one of the songs the way they used vibrato on a guitar strumming the chord at the beginning of each measure. I liked the atmosphere that created, so I tried it with "So Many Birds" and it was very effective. The song doesn't sound anything like Portishead, but that's another reason to listen to all kinds of music, you get ideas you can bring into your own work to create something new. Duke Ellington and Miles Davis were influenced by Ravel and Debussy, and Ravel was influenced by early blues. The reason it's the last song on the album is because it feels like a good way to finish it. It often happens that the album sequence is very close to the order in which the songs were written. There's also the last line - "ride on, until you disappear, even from yourself."

After that it felt like the story had been told.

As your film/video style develops I see how you move from very recognizable images of nature to pure abstraction, which is just as organic since it is derived from the original images. This movement takes me in two directions. It seems to make the film more spiritual, intuitive, more open to the imagination. It also makes me think of the films of Stan Brakhage. This is not because it looks like Brakhage but because you seem to allow the work to take its own course and move into those open areas. How does this work from the inside as you are working on the piece?

Are you trying various techniques or experiments then going with what seems to work best or is it even more organic than that, does it seem to guide itself completely?

Chris Mansel: The difference in Brakhage and me is his images would rush by you and constantly you found yourself inside a community reflecting off one another. In my defense I am alone without the benefit of community and working in a limited medium and without editable film. The software I use is limited to its creation. Film is strength in a society of weakened eyes searching for anything. Brakhage was a genius but then again so was Greg Toland and he never directed one picture but you can’t mention Citizen Kane without discussing his work.

As I am working on each piece the image, the initial image suggests everything and until I add any abstraction, for lack of a better term, it says nothing at all unless you count the surface or what light has down to it in the original photograph. Nietzsche’s last words were, “More light.” He also suggested we listen to music with our muscles. If that is true then perhaps we look at film with our brain, each individual eye developing or editing the image separate from one another. Burroughs was right; life is a cut-up. The process is organic. Short of literally showing you how I make a film I can explain that separate filters in the software capture and distort light in different ways. It is back dated software to the year 2000 so there are more advanced processes out there on the market but I have been successful with what I have at hand. It is organic and it is a process of selecting the recipe per each individual image. There is no way to fully explore the depths of it because there are innumerable ways to take photographs and countless recipes.

Aaron Copland wrote, “When I speak of the gifted listener I am thinking of the non-musician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.”

Do you happen to agree with Copland or do you compose for whoever listens?

Jake Berry: My definition of a listener might be different from Copland. I probably don't draw as clear a distinction between amateur and professional. We live in very different times. In Copland's day professional musicians played classical music, with club or cabaret musicians considered a distant cousin, even though Copland based much of his music on very unprofessional American folk music. I do think that a trained musician or a musician who makes a living by performing and recording music will hear very differently from the music fan who does not play, or the casual listener who enjoys whatever is on the radio. However, I wouldn't say I have a particular type of listener in mind.

Writing a song is more intuitive than intellectual. I am following the feel of the music, contributing to it, toward something that seems real, something that connects with my experience of the world, and something that remains interesting as I develop the progression and melodies and so forth. I hope that if a song is true to my experience, has an authentic feel, and remains interesting over the process of writing and recording, it will also connect with other people, though on their own terms. Most of the time when someone responds to me about one song or another they discover things I never imagined. That's an affirmation as far as I'm concerned because it means that person found something of their own in the song. As a fan, my favorite music always has that quality, so that's a measure of success for me.

Wayne Sides pointed out the obvious to me one day when he said photography is light writing, writing with light. The great photographers, from Steiglietz to Weston to Minor White or Robert Frank all seem to have that in common. Just as drawing is a moving point, so photography is moving light. This is even more so with moving images with people like Toland or Sven Nykvist. You are a poet, novelist, songwriter, painter and sculptor/assemblage artist as well as a film maker. Do you see all these things as part of a whole, points along a continuum or do the demands of each discipline make them completely distinct from one another? If they are part of a whole how does each of the mediums in which you work inform your film and video work?

Chris Mansel: It's a continuum of course but then again it's not. To make a mistake in a film is like making a mistake in any of the other fields you named. You simply have to start over or have to rethink the process. I can't reedit because the software is unable to do so. If I had to pick a discipline I would pick assemblage to mirror film making. I walk along the shore or though the woods or anywhere really and stop and look at a piece and wonder if I could make it work with something else. That takes a lot of thought. But as The Marquis De Sade wrote, "Any enjoyment is weakened when shared."

But the Marquis was insane.

Your writing has always been visual, now that I have given video to the audio recordings of your text, where do you go now with your written word? Is there a way to transcend the traditional form of delivering to the reader or listener?

Jake Berry: Doing Brambu Drezi Book 4 with a moving image component has been my intention for two years or so and the opening section of Brambu Book 4 was finished and posted at You Tube and the IFC Media Lab last fall.

Since then I've done the video and some of the audio for the second section of Book 4, but I'm still working on the words and the visuals on the page. There is a tendency to want to put the words in the video, and I will do some of that (you've done that beautifully with some of your own poetry in video by the way), but the ideal situation is to have the book in hand at the same time the DVD will be playing. The book itself is both a score for performance and visual art. The video as you have added to excerpts from Books 1-3, and as I will continue with Book 4 is just another element. I don't think there is any need to transcend the traditional forms of poetry, just add to them. There are many films that I think are poetry based purely on the visual alone. We spoke about Brakhage before, and I think your work does this. Also, a little closer to the feature film, directors like Godard, Antonioni, Terrence Malick, et. al. create a kind of visual poetry. Godard also drops words into his films sometimes, right in the middle of scenes, at first inexplicably, but gradually you recognize it as a kind of cut-up poetry.

Most of your film/video work so far has drawn from landscape, do you envision a time where you'll want to work with the human form?

Chris Mansel: Yes I have thought of this but I would have to have a model who wouldn't mind the painful prostrations I would put her through. The shots I have in mind would also be in nature and in a studio setting. They would be called Essays in the Passing Sciences. It would be a film about an hour long. I have already conceived some of it in my mind but I don't know if it will take place or not.

Jake Berry: I do what I can to support the work of others, but I never feel like I have done nearly enough. It would be nice to have the resources to start a publishing and recording company so that I could promote and distribute the work of all the artists of whatever kind who are now often ignored. I don't think it's a continuation of my art necessarily, but one wants to give something back, and give something to the world beyond your self. When you love the arts and you see great work not getting the recognition it deserves you want to do something about it. At the same time, whenever I get a few extra dollars I spend it getting my own work out there or buying instruments or equipment that will help me create and promote my own art as well as others. So I feel selfish as well.

Essays in [the] Passing Sciences sounds like a wonderful project. You might be surprised. There might be people willing to do the work because they are interested in being a part of a project beyond the ordinary film. Could you go into a little more detail about what you have in mind?

Chris Mansel: Specifically in nature, there would be those parts of the body I find interesting that would either coalesce with the environment or protrude. In a studio it would be more close-up. There are many things I find interesting about the human body. The idea is to photograph in both settings the form in a new and interesting way.

Say for instance the arm from the shoulder to the elbow against a broken limb both hanging from a tree and a broken limb on the ground. In a studio setting the arm would take on a different meaning when it was up against a light bulb that was turned off to signify the idea is there but it is nothing new.

Another idea is have the body submerged in leaves with only the hair emerging. These are essays and who is to say if is it science or not?

One thing your writing is known for, particularly your Brambu writings is the art. A book of your art, drawings, sculpture would be a monumental task but well worth the under taking. Do you think such a book would free you to create more art and distance you from what you have already created?

Jake Berry: I'm not sure what the result would be. But if there is a publisher willing to give me the opportunity I'd leap at it.

In the past when I've been confronted with similar situations I tended to add it to the things I did rather than subtract it from the activities in which I was already engaged. So I would probably assemble a collection of work that had not been associated with any previous project and spend a period of time obsessed with creating new work.

Your written work, whether prose fiction, non-fiction political writing, or poetry is so diverse that it is almost impossible to imagine it as the product of a single mind. Do you have as many selves, as many souls, as you have approaches to work? Are we by nature singular or plural or both?

Chris Mansel: I have often wondered this myself. When I write, from start to finish, unless it is a long piece I usually finish it in just a few minutes. A poem will sometimes take two minutes or more. The words come out so quick I am lucky to get it down in a cohesive piece. Since I have seizures I can hardly write legible any more creatively. So like most these days I write at the computer.

As far as approaches to work I have a select library I pull from. I won’t try and list them but Dante plays a major role.

Non-fiction mostly, personal experience is where I glean. Pete Townshend quoted Elvis Costello once and said, “Each writer must be a thief and a magpie.” I adhere to that philosophy a great deal.

We are by nature singular though most might disagree. I have said many times your creativity is the medicine you are prescribed. You are prescribed not anyone else. You are the one writing even if someone else is editing. You are the one faced with the blank screen or piece of paper, you and you alone. I can’t think of a better place to be, though I have felt different many times. This evening alone I had a seizure and spent five hours in the emergency room. It was my seizure and it was my pain. I had my wife and daughter with me but it was my instance that brought me there. We are a singular being adrift in a tidal pool. Back and forth we go through life but you can never get away from the fact that we are alone.

Do you foresee a day when the writing of Charles Olson will be taught alongside Mark Twain and Washington Irving in our education system?

Jake Berry: The thought of Charles Olson being taught in our education system troubles my sleep.

I can foresee a time when Olson will be taught at various levels of secondary education and that time is now. He just isn't being taught very widely. There's also a backlash in some quarters against modernism right now. Part of this is justified because in some places modernism and post-modernism (whatever the fuck that is) eclipsed everything else for a while. It makes sense that we keep modernism in perspective. It's only a small part of the story. On the other hand there are those that want to toss it completely in favor of a return to some imagined period when poetry was held in high esteem and was relatively easy to understand. That was before audio recordings, certainly before audio recordings and films became so popular. Even without new formalism or other poetries that shun the apparent difficulties of modernism there are still forms of poetry that are easy to understand and are extremely popular. It just hides under the name 'popular music.' While much in that area is pure product, candy - there is still great poetry sneaking out as pop music because that's the medium in which it is performed. It's a long list and everyone that really loves popular music and devotes time to listening to it will know immediately what I'm talking about. When I use the term popular music, I mean all the music that has been popular in terms of a large audience (compared to other forms like classical, avant-garde, art song and so forth) over the last century as recording technology has made music available to everyone. There's no small amount of modernism in pop music either. But you rarely hear people complain about the difficulty of a Radiohead lyric for instance, or the obscurity of Beck's references. People talk about the words. They recognize them as being more abstract, but that isn't a problem. There are millions of people walking around singing lyrics that are open to as many interpretations as there are listeners and few have a problem with this.

Does the fact that you can sing an obscure bit of poetry make it better somehow than reading it in a book? Maybe it does. Maybe someone should set The Maximus Poems to a nice backbeat, mix in a heavy bass line and some nice guitar licks. I bet if a successful artist did that and didn't call any attention to the fact, beyond the essential permission notice buried in the credits, we'd have people all over the world singing Olson.

The troubled sleep was a paraphrasing of Ezra Pound who said the same thing about the classics being taught.

I have certainly had my share of troubled sleep, but I am as likely to have it troubled by something I am working on as anything else. I'll be so intensely focused on a poem or song that some part of me can't let it go long enough to rest. I wish I was romanticizing this, and I never used to have this problem, but it definitely happens now. Also, I have often found sleep to be a source of creativity. I was trying to catch up on missed sleep from last night with a nap this afternoon and woke up with the phrase along the lines of "the devil is going to get his." I don't know what this means, but for some reason I attached it to the current conflict between Russia and Georgia. Sleep can indeed be an escape.

In times of most intense stress from the world at large I seem to be able to sleep. I think perhaps my mind is trying to escape the stress.

I hope you don't mind if I keep hammering away at this idea of the singular. My experience is that we are in a state of constant change. My self, what "I" am seems to change to adapt constantly to circumstances. So, I find it difficult it locate a singular self. I have an ego of course, an inflated one too much of the time, but I think of that as something like a device for asserting one's presence in the world, and a very crude one at that. It's necessary, but temporal and shouldn't be taken too seriously. I think that one of the origins of our idea of self lies in monotheism.

When Moses asks who is speaking form the burning bush the voice comes back "I am." There's that singular I. As western culture developed around monotheism we also see popes, kings, and so on represent themselves as the presence of God on earth. The presence of the God. Your work seems so varied - you write poetry and songs of all kinds, you do all manner of visual art. Even your recent series of films seems the product of many selves, not a single individual. So I'm puzzled. Can you help me to understand how all of this happens from a singular identity?

Chris Mansel: I keep going back to Georges Bataille, he wrote, "Me, I exist." It is pounded into us that we are all good and evil, but we are all singular, just one man or woman. My story, The Savage Tale of Walter Seems tells the tale of a journalist who has multiple personalities. One is a journalist, one is a killer, and yet another is a holy man.

Perhaps that role of monotheism is in all of us and that is where it comes from. Perhaps the burning bush was talking back to Moses in his mind. Maybe we hear what we want to hear. It would account for the many readings of the same text and the many different versions of worship. We understand more about the chemicals in the brain now than we did then.

How this happens from a singular identity is in my opinion like The Neophyte by Durer. Maybe we are like the fresh young scholar surrounded by the more experienced and as we get older we learn to how to utilize them. But again we are all one mind. As I get older my writing and my films will become better and other artistic endeavors will become apparent.

I'd like to ask you a question I asked Neeli Cherkovski in my interview with him. I wonder if you have a favorite artist or painter and what brought about this opinion?

Jake Berry: It would be impossible to single out anything like a favorite artist. I'm reading, listening, learning all the time from new artists. There's a list at: http://www.myspace.com/jakeberry16.

If you mean painters only the list is just as long. The earliest art yet unearthed is every bit the equal to the "great masters," though I love DaVinci, all the Renaissance north and south, art from all the ancients, everything that isn't just pure commercial crap. I can't get enough of art of whatever kind. I feel the same way about philosophy, history and science. There's so much to see, hear and learn that it's frustrating knowing there will not be enough time to see it all.

Recent developments in the cognitive sciences reveal that our behavior, our emotions and thoughts, are associated with electrochemical activity in the brain. This leads back into the old debates about self-determination. To what extent are we able to make individual decisions? Or is everything we can feel or know or do the result of chemicals in the brain, their transmitters and receptors, responding to external stimulus and biological predispositions?

Chris Mansel: Any mapping of the human mind surely would include a descent into hell. As for individual decisions we must prey upon ourselves like rabid dogs and weigh the consequences but finally whether we receive council from others or not we are the Emperor in his new clothes draped in the blood of the designer and his minions. We are the final word unless we are someone without honor or purpose. A dog will follow a bone only as long as the scent or the desire allows unless you beat him to do so. As someone who suffers unimaginable headaches I can hereby say that the chemical imbalance is that descent into hell with no poet's way out, no guide to soften the rough waters. The transmitters click off and on I believe but in a situation of intense pain I believe that like a damaged nerve they simply shut down. I can only speak for myself and truthfully in the ways of science, just my belief but I tend towards the belief that hell and its torments are in the mind and its pain I feel on an occasional basis.

[Editor’s Note: Many thanks for this incredible journey through the creative mind, from the depths of Dante’s Inferno to the skies of liminal splendor. These artists are creating bridges to new worlds and new contexts that redefine the human experience and every journey they take reveals new portals, new roads or new ways of seeing and believing. Those of us who value the creative process envy and thank them, along with the adventurers who came before and will inevitably follow. Many returns. Jazz.]
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Jake's Word Re: AFGHAN TRAP REVISITED

2009-11-08T17:43:00.000-08:00

[In response to a Jazzman Chronicle reprinted below.]

Well said. Delivered with the intelligence, scope and precision of the finest political writing. Much closer in that regard to the founders than anything you're likely to ready anywhere in the major presses. Thank you for your perseverance. We need that now and always.

I keep thinking of something Robert McNamara said when he returned with some of his American counterparts to meet with his former enemies in Vietnam decades later. One of them asked him, "Did you not know the history of Vietnam? Every country around us and many countries from all over the world have invaded and all of them have left defeated. We are still here."

It's obvious that the Bush administration never bothered to study history, any history, let alone Afghanistan. They ignored the fact the English pieced the country together out of warring tribes, just as they did in Iraq. They ignored the fact the British could not control Afghanistan and after a long struggle, they abandoned it. The British empire was crumbling as they left. They even ignored history so recent that even their children and grandchildren knew it. The Soviets invaded with the same results. They left as the Soviet empire crumbled.

We knew this going into Afghanistan. But we went anyway. Al Queda finally found the trigger and pulled it when they could be certain of a massive, unrelenting response. An unified multinational force is the only possible answer in the short run. Troops from all over the world, relatively small numbers from each nation, adapting to each shift of position, applying pressure, making it clear that they will not be there permanently. Eventually U.S. troops and those of other nations beyond the region will have to leave, just as we will eventually have to develop domestic energy resources and leave the entire region to settle its own problems or fight one another forever.

Civilization as we define it began in the middle east (and probably China and other places as well). We will never control the region. Not Alexander, not even the Persians themselves, could hold the region for more than a few years.

We are in deep now, but we don't have to be. The world should be put on notice that our time there is limited and that we have the skill, innovative drive, and resources to free ourselves of economic and cultural ties to the region (including Israel). We should have never been there to begin with. We simply cannot stay there forever if we wish to survive.

Jake Berry

THE AFGHAN TRAP REVISITED: COMPOUNDING OUR MISTAKES

By Jack Random

Let’s assume that the group of people who planned and executed the September 2001 attack on America’s institutions of finance, the military and an unknown third target (I would have thought the CIA in Langley, Virginia) were something more capable than idiots. Let us assume they had at least a notion of a plan that went beyond hitting us where it hurts.

The American response to such an attack was not difficult to predict: We would identify a likely enemy and strike with the awesome might of the world’s most powerful military.

Our response may have gone beyond what the enemy predicted. If they had knowledge of the then residents of the halls of power, they could have predicted a war in Iraq. Though unrelated to the attack and the attackers, Iraq was a war the White House wanted for reasons as obvious as a solar eclipse.

They may have known that we would attack Iraq but they were certain that we would attack the nation that unwittingly hosted them: Afghanistan. They would have predicted that our zeal to display our awesome powers of destruction would cut short any discussion with the ruling Taliban. They would have predicted that our pride and stubborn determination would lead us further and further into the Afghan trap where we would awaken years later to find that we can neither go forward nor get out.

As any foreign power might have told us: there is no winning a war in Afghanistan. There is only a slow, painful death.

Our military commanders tell us what they are supposed to tell us. It is not in their vocabulary to lose a war once it has begun. They tell us what they need to win tempered by what the public will accept. Instead of saying we need to exterminate half the Afghan population and annihilate the northern provinces of Pakistan, the commander requests another 30 to 40 thousand troops. If he gets them have no doubt there will be another request six months down the road and another and another until at length we are in so far we can neither go forward nor get out.

We are in the process of doing precisely what our attackers wanted us to do.

But the commanders and their defenders in Washington protest: The surge will work just as it did in Iraq. Never in the annals of military history has the truth been so deviously distorted. When true history is written, it will record that the American occupation forces in Iraq, trapped and cornered in a spiral descent, made a deal with the enemy. We would give them arms and money (just as we did the Mujahideen in Soviet occupied Afghanistan) to fight against a common foe. They took our money, our weapons and our ammunition on the condition that we would agree to withdraw our forces from the battlefield.

So what have we won in Iraq? Have we won control of the oilfields we so coveted? Have we won a more loyal ally in the region than our former ally in Saddam Hussein? Have we weakened our regional adversary in Iran? Have we secured the democratic form of government?

We have in fact accomplished none of these. We have in fact strengthened Iran, lost our influence over the oil, and the only thing less certain than Iraqi democracy is the prospect of Iraqi unity and peace. As the Hollywood oil man famously opined: There will be blood. There will be a fight for control of Iraq that will likely tear that creation of the British mandate apart. It will be a battle that will stretch on for years and decades and perhaps even centuries and in the end we will have little say over who wins and loses.

As it is in Iraq so it is in Afghanistan but more so. We find ourselves in the same dilemma that confronted the Soviets in the fateful year of 1987. Before the occupation Soviet military commanders warned that Afghanistan was a trap. It was a nation of disparate tribes that could only be united by a foreign occupier. It was a war the Soviets could not win but it would suck the life out of the Soviet treasury like the unquenchable thirst of a vampire. Soviet political leaders would hear none of it. They were the mighty Soviets. They would prevail where no one had before. Once it became clear they could not prevail they were afraid to fail, afraid to be embarrassed as the Americans had been in Vietnam. They were caught in the Afghan trap.

Flash forward to today. The situation in Iraq is unstable even as we prepare the withdrawal of the vast majority of our troops. The situation in Afghanistan is a spiral descent. The Karzai government has revealed itself as hopelessly corrupt. The Afghan model of democracy was clearly Florida 2000 in which votes can be manipulated to the desired outcome at the command of the government in office. (To Obama’s credit, it was not acceptable to the new White House.) We are sponsoring murderers, thieves and drug dealers even as we condemn the enemy for doing the same.

We are losing the war not because we have the wrong strategy and not because we lack the soldiers. We are losing the war for the same reason the Soviets lost: It is not our land to win or lose. The Afghanis may play with us for some time. They may take our weapons. Some may take our money. Whatever they promise or bargain away, in the end we will leave and they will decide for themselves who rules their land.

Our legitimate objectives in Afghanistan are (a) eliminating terrorist cells and training centers intent on attacking our people or assets and (b) ensuring that nuclear weapons in Pakistan are not transferred to irresponsible hands.

Despite the bravado of our former president, we have always known that the mission in this part of the world is one of intelligence gathering and precise covert military action backed up by prosecutions in international courts of law.

It is time we stopped playing by the script of our enemy and started standing for the cause of justice. We are not engaged in a battle of civilizations. We are upholding the rule of law.

From any rational perspective the Afghan president by embracing the illegitimacy of his government has enabled the American president to find the most direct path out of this hopeless quagmire. Clearly, the kind of democracy Karzai envisioned is the kind illustrated by Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Dick Nixon in a former era. It is the kind of democracy practiced in Russia, Iran and countless African states. It is the kind that does not leave the important questions government in the hands of a mindless rabble.

That kind of blatantly undemocratic reasoning might have brought no more than a chuckle from our previous administration as they blindly pressed on with their predetermined agenda of empire building but it should not be acceptable to our current president.

In the beginning many of us were willing to give Karzai the benefit of the doubt. So what if he was a lackey for the oil industry? So what if he had a history of corruption? Anyone who takes the stage in international politics has danced with the devil once or twice. This was his chance to come clean. Instead, by embracing the dark side of electoral politics and rejecting the very concept of democracy, Karzai has become our worst Afghan nightmare. He gives the lie to the benevolence of the American occupation.

It is not in our national interest to uphold a corrupt and unlawful government. It is not in our interest to maintain an occupation indefinitely. Our only interests are fighting the violent extremists who threaten us and maintaining a stable government in nuclear Pakistan. Both objectives would be better achieved by maintaining a small footprint in the region and by withdrawing the bulk of our military presence.

However we may despise the Taliban for their archaic beliefs it was a mistake to declare them the enemy alongside Al Qaeda. The Taliban had no part in the planning or execution of the terror attacks on America. When we declared war on the Taliban we compelled them to join ranks with Al Qaeda. We simultaneously committed ourselves to an unwinnable war. With eyes wide open and led by arrogant folly we marched into the world’s deepest muck hole.

When we made our mission not a surgical strike by Special Forces to eradicate Al Qaeda but a full-scale invasion and occupation, it was a mistake of epic proportions. When we announced to the world that our goal was not to subjugate the Afghan people but to establish a working democracy, we ought to have kept our word.

A democracy is not a packaged good. It is a process and a very messy process under the best of conditions. The most basic premise of a democracy is that all segments of the population must be represented. You do not disenfranchise those with whom you do not agree. No matter how repugnant we may find a group’s beliefs, in a democracy we provide equal access to the electoral process. To exclude a segment of the electorate (as we did the Sunnis in Iraq) is to guarantee a civil war.

We must remember that in the broad scope of history, our own nation disenfranchised women and minorities until only yesterday. Imagine that a foreign power took control of our government and excluded Mormons or Jews or evangelical Christians for their archaic beliefs. The most secular of Americans would never accept that kind of manipulation in betrayal of the democratic ideal.

The way forward in Afghanistan is clear. We must correct the errors of the past. If it is still possible we must invite the Taliban to join the electoral process and we must make sure that the process is fair and equitable to all Afghanis.

The Taliban is not our rightful enemy on the field of battle. They are our adversaries in the universe of ideas. That is a battle we can and will win for we carry the forces of justice and destiny on our side.

What has happened in Afghanistan is shameful. There is no redemption for the kind of corruption the Karzai government has shown. We cannot defend them. We must therefore ensure that a fair and open electoral process sweeps them away into the dustbin of history.

The only agreement we should and can require of the Afghan government is one the Taliban would surely have agreed to nine years ago: a modest presence across the landscape from which to operate a continued assault on those who attacked us and those who intend to attack us and those who similarly threaten the nuclear stability of neighboring Pakistan.

That is our legitimate interest in the region and it is the best scenario we could possibly hope for at this stage of the game.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Mind of Mansel: Cessation Blues

2009-11-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

...

american history sweeps a street that won't get clean
I'm carrying a gun carved from snakes and beans
the past tells me the battlefield is not always green
liberty is the highest peak that I have seen

wrapped myself in the flag and went out on the ledge
it took two steps forward to get out over the edge
lovers held out their hands but watched me fall
once I hit purgatory it turned into a serious brawl

I came back to life in the fields of war you see
and I cried to see that others were following me
so I walked off the line and lay my gun to the side
and in the name of peace you know I again died

chorus:

Cessation Blues, let it be one with you
even Gulliver knew, the Cessation Blues

- Chris Mansel

JAKE BERRY'S RESPONSE TO KEITH OLBERMANN’S SPECIAL COMMENTARY ON HEALTHCARE

2009-10-17T11:48:00.000-07:00

Olbermann is eloquent as always. And he utilizes a tool that most journalists either do not have or fear to use – a vocabulary. Maybe the words are written by someone else, but regardless, this is proof that intelligent use of the language can of itself be persuasive.

I agree with Olbermann, but that's no surprise. I have always felt that we should seek to collectively try to create a society that is compassionate before all else.

But in a free and open society, we are also free to be subjected to manipulation by those who are greedy to acquire and maintain their hold on power even if it means many others will die, even if it means that they themselves will die sooner than necessary. Power has its own directive. It seeks to consume, to control and drive the whole world to a massive, bloody conclusion merely for the ability to say "I had," "I have," and "I am above all others." It is ego written as large as the universe and once you have tasted even a small portion of it you cannot let it go without personal sacrifice because anything or anyone you believe you have conquered is now a part of you and to lose it means losing something more precious than life in the future, it means losing that part of your self right now. It means a small, immediate death. Once this contagion grips you you will do anything to protect it. That is the contagion, the real disease at the heart of the problem.* Many people – probably a majority now – believe that healthcare reform means that they will lose a part of themselves. This despite the fact that they do not actually possess what it is they are afraid of losing.

Once again we will fail because we prefer to react before we think. The leadership in and out of government, those who will ultimately make the decision about healthcare, has been horrible on all sides and from all corners. No one has spoken directly and clearly about the issue. Olbermann comes as close to it as anyone I have read or heard when he says that the issue comes down to the simple fact - "I want to live." We can make the apparently complex issue much clearer by asking a few questions. Here they are:

Does everyone in this country have the same right to live as everyone else?

If you are rich do you have a greater right to live than if you are poor?

If you are poor is it your obligation to become wealthy enough to pay for health insurance and all other health costs no matter how rapidly those costs continue to rise?

Should we cut healthcare costs by simply eliminating those who cannot afford it from the system? More directly, should we allow the poor to die because they are too poor to afford healthcare?

And how much will the cost of healthcare have to rise before you become one of those who can no longer afford to pay for it and be condemned to death?

Life is precious. The life we have is all we know. But as Olbermann states so eloquently, and as we all know, we all must die. How long do you want to live? Do you want to live as long as you are able to speak and hear and know the world around you? If so, you will need to live healthy and need a reliable system of healthcare to help you return to health when you inevitably fall ill. Do you have that right? If you do, does everyone else as well? Where do you draw the line? In the U.S. it appears that the line will be drawn with dollars. Life will be equated with wealth. The richer you are the longer you live. If that is the choice we make. So be it. We have always had a talent for ignoring the suffering of others with the exception of short term emergencies. Oh, there are those few who will give to the poor or help out in other ways. A few will even dedicate their entire lives to alleviating the suffering of others. But most of us are better at ignoring pain and suffering until it touches us. Then we want it to go away. In short, we want to live.

Do I matter more than you? I don't think that I do. And it doesn't bother me that I have less money in my pocket because someone else who is suffering tonight draws on medicaid or medicare or some other publicly funded program. But those programs are in fact underfunded and medicaid in particular is one reason that healthcare costs continue to rise. Another reason might be that pharmaceutical companies, as a group, spend half their budgets on advertising drugs (most of which cannot be acquired without a prescription). But I am obviously a socialist, right? If you believe that you believe a lie. And I am one of many millions.

Consider the questions and consider how you will feel if you fall on the bad side of the equation.

This is the way I speak to myself when it comes to the issue of healthcare. I am not sure that there is a solution. But can't we at least try to find a way for everyone to live as long as they can or as long as they chose? Maybe the answer is simply to leave things alone and let the system collapse. Maybe a better system will replace it based on supply and demand alone. I doubt it, but I'm beginning to think we're going to find out.

INFNITIES
jk

* Editor's Note: Despite the best efforts of the healthcare industry, the public continues to strongly support healthcare reform in general and the public option in particular. Another way to look at the debate is this: If healthcare is a right and not a privilege then it is immoral to profit by it. The health insurance industry serves no useful purpose to the general public. It should eliminated by the most direct means possible. Further, profit making corporations should not be allowed to own and operate hospitals and healthcare clinics any more than such corporations should be allowed to run schools, fire stations, police forces and the military. We are told to be afraid of government (i.e., socialism) but we ought to be afraid of the corporate takeover that is unfolding before our weary eyes.

Beatlick Travel: Final Report 2009

2009-10-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

Date: Oct 15, 2009 5:59 AM
Beatlick Travel Report #12

It has taken a full year to really become comfortable with our new van. I felt so connected to my old 71 VW and transferring emotionally to my newer 77 has been like taking on a new lover. When in Albuquerque last month the transmission hung up on me twice in one day in downtown traffic. I panicked at first then thought this van is officially blessed by the Ukranian Orhtodox Church, me too and Joe. This can’t be happening. The painful learning curve. All this time I have been shifting in a lazy X pattern when I should have been using an H pattern. So now I know and that is last bit of trouble I have had with the van. Coming back from Taos was one of the most pleasant experiences I have had, stress free driving now.

We are also in a new era with Beatlick News. We’ve changed over to a new publishing program, more compatible than our old Quark documents. I also took the front page picture with my Tracphone and emailed it to my new laptop computer, which is Wifi compatible. Publication is becoming much more streamlined and less stressful, too. And the house-sitting gigs are really starting to stack up so no new trips planned until January.

Here are some final thoughts which will be my Live For Art column in our upcoming issue. Check out beatlick.com in about a week or look for a hard copy in the mail if you are a subscriber.

The Red River and Rio Grande come together at the Wild Rivers Recreational Area in New Mexico. Far above at The Junta Point you stand between the two gorges that hold the rivers between their enormous canyon walls. Having trekked down the canyon paths to the confluence and looking up to Junta Point you can barely intellectually grasp how long it took for the rivers to eat through the flat earth further and further down to the canyon floor. Millions and millions of years. There in the midst of all that space and depth I can’t help but ponder how insignificant I am in the context of all the time ensued to create this natural wonder. How little do we matter in the entire scheme of things except to our own selves and those who share this time and space with us. It’s marvelous and frightening.

I marvel at the friends I am still allowed to have. The longer we are on this earth the more we lose: family, friends, neighborhoods, entire worlds and levels of consciousness.

The universe is still expanding, making us even more significant and small. How we treat each other now is the most important thing—in our homes and in the world. Happy Trails

Keep in touch and stay on the Happy Trails...
Beatlick Pamela Hirst

AMERICA’S BROKEN PROMISE: THE UNFULFILLED RIGHTS OF HUMANKIND

2009-10-04T21:56:00.000-07:00

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

By Jack Random

In what Thomas Paine christened The Age of Reason, democracy supplanted the royal monarchy as the government of choice for enlightened nations. There was much discussion in those pivotal times of human advancement concerning the inherent Rights of Man. Borrowing from England’s Magna Carta, the British philosopher John Locke and the French philosophers Jean-Jacque Rousseau and Francois-Marie Arouet (aka Voltaire), Thomas Jefferson immortalized the universal human rights in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Many attempts have been made to identify and innumerate the universal Rights of Man but none yet has succeeded in finding a general consensus across the divergent cultures of our planet. Some nations, held back by centuries of tradition and religious belief, have not yet accepted the basic tenets of individual liberty. Others like our own have failed to move beyond the most basic of rights and liberties. Some would say we have done a poor job of ensuring and protecting even those fundamental rights and I would count myself among them.

There is something to be said for the conservative approach to enlightenment. We cannot expect primitive societies governed by witchdoctors and tribal warlords to be transformed into functioning democracies overnight. We cannot expect nations carved in the earth by foreign occupying powers to embrace ideals of governance they have neither discovered nor devised for themselves. All societies must be allowed to evolve according to their own levels of consciousness by their own methods.

But we in America pride ourselves as a bastion of civil liberty. We never tire of proclaiming ourselves leaders of the free world, a shining city on a hill illuminating the way forward for all of humankind. It hardly matters that we have so often failed the test by sponsoring military dictatorships and coups or allowing the disenfranchisement of minority voters to overturn elections, we have an obligation by our own proclamation and self-aggrandizement to forward the cause. We have a responsibility to lead the world because we believe ourselves to be the world’s leader.

Despite our flaws and failures we have often found our way to push forward in critical times not by summoning the lost voices of our founders but by recognizing their substantial shortcomings. Our founders did not acknowledge the rights of women but the nation found a way. Our founders did not recognize the rights of minorities or the poor but succeeding generations righted those wrongs.

It is time we moved forward. It is time we understood once and for always that for every right our founders committed to law they got something wrong. They were profoundly flawed men even if enlightened for their time and we have no obligation to be bound in perpetuity to their shortcomings.

The recent national debate (if it may be called that) has brought to light several of our shortcomings in the fulfillment of human rights. When angry white men bring semi-automatic weapons to political protests it should not escape anyone’s attention that the right to free expression is compromised by anyone who does not agree with the armed protesters. It is not by happenstance that the founders placed the right to bear arms in the context of “a well regulated militia.” They had no intention of validating the spectacle of an armed mob intimidating their fellow citizens.

What are we afraid of: that a subversive element will take over the government? I would suggest that the subversive element is the angry mob itself and that recent history has already recorded the takeover of our government through electoral fraud. But the remedy was and is in the ballot box, not in armed mobs issuing thinly veiled threats before the television screens.

It will take time but we must curtail the right to arm in order to protect the greater right to freedom of expression and freedom from the inevitable violence that will ensue if this trend continues. We must elect officials who are sworn to take no money from the gun lobby that zealously blocks gun control legislation to prevent unstable individuals from purchasing automatic weapons and wielding them in public. We must eventually change the political equation that will not allow anyone to become a Supreme Court justice unless they agree to ignore the language of the second amendment in favor of an unfettered individual right to bear arms. Barring that we must amend the constitution.

The national debate on healthcare reform has brought to the fore the unfulfilled right to decent and affordable medical care for all our citizens. Indeed, all human beings, even those here illegally or as guests, should have the right to medical treatment without fear of penalty or deportation.

America is so far behind the curve on this issue that it alone places us in the second class of nations on the fulfillment of human rights and respect for human dignity. Every American should be ashamed that we alone among industrialized nations fail to ensure universal healthcare to our people. We are so blind to our own interests that we allow an industry that is motivated by profit and profit alone to dictate the terms of so-called “healthcare reform.” The corporate monoliths that provide millions in political contributions and millions more in a public relations offensive summon the uninsured and unhealthy masses to decry real reform as socialism and (unbelievably) fascism and the masses fall in line. It seems not to matter that fully 65% of the people do not buy the corporate propaganda and remain steadfast in supporting the public option as critical to the reform effort, it only matters that the angry mob on the television screen opposes it.

The fault here goes to the heart of our democracy. Quite simply, our elected officials are on the take. Until we succeed in banning corporate contributions from dominating our electoral system, our officials will represent the wealthiest corporations first and spend most of their time trying to deceive the people into believing it is in their interest.

Perhaps they can explain how it is in our interest that international corporations have been granted all the rights of individuals and more while individuals have been denied the most basic right of democracy: the right to vote. If you don’t believe that is possible you should spend a little time reading the landmark Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore 2000. If the courts were forced to recognize the right to vote they would find it difficult to ignore the massive voter disenfranchisement that allowed George W. Bush to steal two presidential elections.

How can we possibly believe that our president went to war to secure other nation's rights to democracy when we have done so little to protect our own? The election of 2000 should have been the death knell of the Electoral College. Instead it fortified our standing as a second-class democracy. In any other nation the defense of archaic rules to justify the nullification of popular will would have been condemned for what it is: hypocrisy.

Compounding our shame, we have leaders who advance the notion that voting is not a right at all; it is rather a privilege. As a wise man once said: That is not only a lie but a damnable lie. If voting is a privilege then we live in an aristocracy and democracy be damned.

We cannot summon the founders on this one – not unless we want to go back to the days when the right to vote was conditioned on property ownership and neither women nor minorities were in the club. When the Declaration proclaimed, “all men are created equal,” it was a literal exclusion. The founders set up the United States Senate as a surrogate House of Lords to guard against the dangers of democracy. We can no longer defend such notions any more than we can defend slavery or the disenfranchisement of women.

The U.S. Senate has become the obstructionist body that thwarts the will of the people. It not only stands in the way of meaningful healthcare reform; it stands in the way of the advancement of human rights.

It is time we ended the archaic Senate rules that allow forty senators to defeat any major legislation. If they cannot do it or will not then we must elect senators who will. But we cannot find viable candidates for such a regal position who will represent our interests because the cost of a senate seat requires big money – the kind of money that only corporate monoliths can provide.

Here lies the linchpin of this thesis. It is the reason our government is incapable of advancing the rights of humankind. It is the reason we have not secured our right to vote. It is the reason we have not fulfilled the right to healthcare, the right to employment or the right to decent shelter. All our interests as citizens of the nation fall secondary to corporate interests because the largest and most powerful international corporations have a stranglehold on our political process.

They have the money and money rules – even when it has been provided on the public dole from our own pockets.

What we need now is a peaceful revolution, a mass movement, and a cause that supercedes all others. It is a cause that unifies disparate groups because it is simple and appeals to common sense. It would not prevent the election of fools and charlatans to office but it would end corporate dominance of our government overnight.

It is simply this: Only individuals (subject to the limitations set by our legislative bodies) shall be allowed to contribute to political campaigns.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Beatlick Travel: Wild Rivers

2009-09-29T18:40:00.001-07:00

Date: Sep 26, 2009 11:23 AM

The confluence of the Rio Grande and Red River is at the Wild Rivers Recreation Area where this report originates. The confluence I mentioned earlier on the Low Road to Taos report was actually the Rio Grande and Rio Pueblo confluence.

I also meant to tell you in my last report about all the small black tarantulas that kept crossing the dirt road we took out to Manby Springs. We passed seven in one mile. That was before the weather changed. These little guys knew all about it and were on their way to make new burrows for themselves as they prepared to settle down for the winter.

We are already hunkered down in full winter mode now as we head out for the Wild Rivers Recreation Area on BLM land. We are sleeping on the bottom bunk and lining the interior with the Indian blankets to keep in the warmth from two big candles, an oil lamp, the occasional Coleman heater, and my favorite – a hot water bottle. I carry it around like a baby, call it the “baby” and just am amazed how warm and cozy it makes me feel. I love it.

We have driven about thirty miles from Taos, off the main road, through lots of small communities that seem to be living a much more hard-scrabble life than their counterparts in glamorous downtown Taos. The clouds get bigger, grayer, and more daunting as we head further and further away.

The Montoso campsite is along the rim of the Rio Grande Gorge. The mountains are dark and vast in the background. There is a second gorge beyond our horizon where the Red River is making its way through its own steep canyon walls, heading toward the Rio Grande. It rains on us that night and a subdued atmosphere greets us as we set out on our hike.

We had to walk to the Junta Trail from the van through a path of decimated pines. By the time we got to the gorge overlook there was some sun peeking out of the clouds. We were well suited up, complete with gloves, sweaters, neck scarves, and sporting two walking sticks.

Here two ecological worlds collide at the Junta. High above on the rim where we camp we see grasslands below the big mountain peaks, along with sagebrush, juniper and pinyon trees. Far down below in the shadows at the bottom of the gorge there are towering ponderosa pine, small springs, and lush riparian vegetation. All lay there in shadow most of the day because the canyon walls are so high.

I can't imagine how far it is from the bottom of that gorge where the river runs to the top of those snow capped mountain peaks that greeted us this morning. It is a 1.2 mile hike down to the confluence. The trail is rated “difficult” and it is. We set out on a rocky switch back trail, had to climb down one ladder, take a long series of metal steps clinging to the rock face, then follow the continuous switch back rocky path down to a flatland. The BLM has made a valiant effort to hold back the relentless law of gravity that erodes the steep rock walls, taking out old trails, and necessitating new ones. At the bottom four trails converged into a cross, where we picked up the Junta trail, .4 miles further down an easy dirt path.

Unlike so many other places we have constantly encountered other hikers here, mostly fishermen with their rods in hand. Two couples came by us with ski poles, or I guess hiking poles. I took our two wooden walking sticks and made myself a hiking stick outfit and was amazed how much easier it was to maneauver and traverse across the rocks.

Despite how intimidating the trail looked and how distant the confluence, we made it there in 30 minutes or less. The hiking sticks I think added to the speed. Joe is a billy goat and scampers over rocks. I was definitely going slower than he was before I started using the two sticks.

There were only big boulders where the two rivers came together, no shoreline. The Rio Grande is the larger of the two rivers, neither one of them really daunting, yet the slope of the land and the big rocks created a friction and conflict so strong that a marvelous roar fills your ears and the water is smashing and gushing over stones, with the light dancing through the droplets of water. I found a relatively flat rock, took up a comfortable yoga position and just willed all that raw energy into my own body.

Later with great dexterity we made two sandwiches on our knees; there was no surface to maneuver with. We munched avocado, pepperoni, and cheese sandwiches while we watched the nearby man fishing for trout. Two women sat on rocks keeping him company. The sun went in and out and long logs of gray clouds still dominated the sky.

When Joe pointed out to me the ridge we had to hike back to I was shocked by how far away it looked and figured it would take all afternoon to get there. However surprisingly enough we were back withing an hour and fifteen minutes.

The most devastating shock of this hike is the destruction created by the pine bark beetles. We camped in the bone yard of pine tree skeletons. In my estimation in places a third of the trees are destroyed. Their carcasses so massive in number that it would be impossible to remove them, or burn them, and they devastate the landscape with their blackened limbs like burnt fingers scratching towards deliverance. But there is none.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel: Taos

2009-09-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

Date: Sep 23, 2009 11:45 AM

We spent four days urban camping in Taos alternating between Wal-Mart and Smith's grocery store before we found the public parking lot. Most accommodating with the city bus line right there, too. Taos is wrapping up the "Summer of Love" and I have had a good time interviewing locals about their reactions. Very diversified and some downright controversial. I have a scathing report to pass on later from a local, but I'm still waiting for permission to publish his rant.

Taos is tiny and I'm telling you they roll up the sidewalks at six o'clock around here. The restaurants are closed by nine and there are I think only three bars that are open into the night. The whole focus is the art scene and skiing. The prices are outrageous I think and all the merchandise is high end. We attended an open-mic in the lounge at the historic Taos Inn, but got there late. There was never a sign up sheet or invitation by the guy singing for anyone else to participate. The drinks were $9 apiece so Joe just ordered a $2 cup of tea. It was a great place to people watch. It's obvious who are the wealthy tourists and who are local low-enders. Their faces are lined with hard work and their jeans are stained with dirty feet in worn out sandals.

The lobby itself was magnificent, constructed of old timbers higher that telephone poles called vegas. They held up a mosaic roof of more wood, smaller pieces called latillas. They made a mosaic of great beauty, like some Cistene Chapel made out of logs. Balconied rooms overlooked the lounge and there was a great iron door that opened into the bar. All the walls were old adobe.

A beautiful long-haired redhead sat next to Beatlick Joe so he initiated a conversation with her. Turns out she lives in Gatlinburg and is moving to the tiny little shrine town of Chimayo. She said her name was Jen and she was staying in Santa Fe and had driven up for the day because she loved Taos so much. Her rental car had been broken into into two days before and she was overcome with how much help and support people gave her as she dealt with the problem. Turns out when she was married she lived in Nashville and her ex-husband ran the fancy Stockyard Restaurant downtown. After a few reminiscences about Music City we were discussing the local hot springs.

Before long a single man sitting on a nearby leather sofa joined our conversation. He was from Rhode Island, a real estate evaluator, whatever that means. He was obviously taken with Jen, who never would disclose her last name as she divulged her former careers in radio and the broadcast media world.

Bob turned out to be divorced, came to Taos two or three times a year, and was currently staying in an earth ship house out in what the locals call the "gopher holes." Those are houses made of recycled materials and tires filled with dirt. As Jen used her interviewing skills Bob's answers disclosed more affluency. He had another house in Vermont. The richer he appeared the more animated she became. Soon Bob was ordering a round of those $9 drinks. We had a good time talking to those two and Joe and I speculated if Jen would really drive all the way back to Santa Fe. We all departed when the bar closed at eleven. Jen had a CD of one of her interviews with an important physicist and philosopher back at her car she wanted to give Bob. We speculated whether she would make that long drive back to Santa Fe that night.

It was one of the most social nights we have had with anyone since we came here. The other highlight of our trip was the spectacular hike down to Manby Hot Springs. They are just a few miles out of town, about six miles down a dirt road. Then you park and hike down the Rio Grande Gorge. It was a steep and rocky trail but only took about twenty minutes. Another VW van owner was there with us. We have seen a lot of VW vans in this town.

Our hot springs mate was Stephan, pronounced the European way: stef-fun. I had hoped we would be alone and we had waited most of the afternoon for the parking lot to empty out. But just as we locked up our van Stephan pulled up in his. So I had to soak, in my bathing suit I might add, with Joe and Stephan both naked. But that's the way it's done out here.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel: Albuquerque

2009-09-26T15:06:00.000-07:00

Date: Sep 13, 2009 9:49 AM

[The website beatlick.com is up and running with the current issue of Beatlick News featured. This is now our only website, geocities site is closed down.]

The roosters start crowing at four in the morning. We are camped out in a field in the South Valley at a friend’s farm. The cows are right next door, too. This is really the country with the sounds of the day marking time just like the church bells used to do in the Upper Ninth Ward in New Orleans.

The chickens sound like people quarreling off in a distance or Ninja warriors getting ready to attack. No wonder farmers wake up early, you can’t sleep through the noise. The roosters crow until about ten in the morning and then the cows start up. It is a cacophony all day long. And the night is augmented with the sound of the neighboring dogs.

We always have some sort of audio book to listen to so when the roosters start in the morning I turn on the boom box in the dark, put on my CDs of “Benjamin Franklin,” “The Johnstown Flood,” or Michener’s “Mexico.” That usually gets me through till about seven in the morning.

We stayed out in the field for a week with our tent set up. It attaches to the van’s sliding side door and creates such an accommodating space we are quite comfortable. We spend our time clearing out the weeds in the garden and watering the orchards, strawberries, and raspberries for camping privileges. After a week we got to move into the A-frame adobe guest house and set up until some more money comes in for next month.

We have to climb an eight-foot ladder to go to bed. It's a challenge to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and we do our best to avoid it. Makes climbing down from the top bunk of the van a breeze. Although I am grateful to be indoors; it's so much quieter.

We love the simplicity of the farm, the slower pace, and the daily chores. From this vantage point you would never guess you were so close to a thriving metropolis such as Albuquerque. We head out in another day or two, for some poetry functions in Las Placitas, then on to Taos.

Happy Trails,
Beatlick Pamela

Wakiza's Wisdom: When will the wiser people wake up and make a stand? Sadly not anytime soon...

2009-09-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

By Wakiza McQueen‏

There is truly a sickness plaguing the American people. Our society has become (maybe always has been) quite individualistic and self-effacing. One often wonders if Charles Darwin was not only a scientific forerunner, but a prophet describing the evolution of the human species, as it were, when he produced his seminal work, On the Origin of Species. For it is truly survival of the fittest in today's society. And the fit, in America, are the top 1% that control the wealth in this country, not excluding corporations. I am by no means an anarchist or a far-left wing zealot espousing the virtues of a socialist economy. I am an American first and foremost, and like our fore bearers, believe in a capitalistic economic system. However, as quoted by Arianna Huffington, capitalism requires a moral foundation with which to operate successfully:

"In capitalism as envisioned by its leading lights, including Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, you need a moral foundation in order for free markets to work. And when a company fails, it fails. It doesn't get bailed out using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. What we have right now is Corporatism. It's welfare for the rich. It's the government picking winners and losers. It's Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It's socialized losses and privatized gains."

Indeed it is "Corporatism" and "socialized losses and privatized gains" that has infected our culture, and like a virulent retrovirus, it is destroying us from within and there seems to be no cure in sight, nay, not even a vaccination; we're all susceptible. Natural selection too is taking place, but not by the evolution of the best qualities for success being passed along, but by government intervention, call it "elitist selection", by which our government picks the winners and losers: AIG, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citi Bank, et al.

The solution is simple. We need to change Washington and enact a public campaign financing system that supersedes the existing private campaign financing system that corrupts our politics in this country. We need to change the for profit industrialization of healthcare, the military, and the prison system, that treat human beings as commodities to be bought and sold (I thought slavery was outlawed in this country with the emancipation proclamation). Finally, we need to elect politicians that represent their constituencies and care about the social welfare of this country, and legislate for the common needs and rights for all people in our society. Bertrand Russell said it best: "The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubt." So the question remains, when will the wiser among us wake up and make a stand? I'm on my two feet, how about you?

wmcqueen@kpmg.com

Beatlick Travel: El Malpais

2009-09-22T18:48:00.000-07:00

Subject: Beatlick TR: 7Malpais
Date: Sep 10, 2009 10:08 AM

[A note to say there is something going on with beatlick.com website and I'm really bummed out about it, so if anyone is trying to access Beatlick News there I hope I can get this straightened out soon.]

Last night we slept under two chenille blankets, a down comforter, and an Indian blanket over that. The weather has really turned, clouds, drizzle. Beatlick Joe wants to poke around Quemado Lake but I am anxious to move on. We are headed to El Malpais, near Grants, NM. My best friend from my Alaska days way back in the mid 80s, in a little tiny town named San Rafael, just four miles from Grants. One more night to spend in the wilderness and then we’ll be off to Andrew’s house and I can’t wait to see him.

The closer we got to El Malpais the warmer it gets and I am relieved, wasn’t really ready to start enduring the cold yet! The El Malpais National Conservation Area gets its name from the lava beds that comprise it. This area is full of old volcanoes and the black lava flows still dominate the landscape although they were deposited thousands of years ago. You can stand there and imagine what the dinosaurs saw. There is a great picnic ground at the Lower Narrows picnic and we set up. First we pulled all of the blankets and bedding out of the van and stretched them in the hot sun to dry out. In the late afternoon we took a hike along the Narrows Rim.

The Narrows Rim Trail at an elevation of over 7,000 feet gives hikers a view to witness geologic processes thousands of years apart. We took a moderate hike up to the top of an ancient mesa where we could see the much younger lava beds below, all black with gangly trees struggling out of the folds and crevices. On top of the mesa the soft sandstone rocks are a beautiful dirty rose color with light tints of green moss, and pale blue rock fragments. In the light of afternoon with the ferns and vegetation in full bloom it is just a breathtaking sight and in so many pastel colors that contrast so sharply with the lava beds across the highway and the dark clouds beginning to loom overhead.

The wildflowers are abundant all along the trail here in the late summer. Ponderosa pine, a pinon and juniper woodland, and a variety of oak and shrub species line our pathways. Brochures claim mule deer, elk, bobcat and black bear have all been spotted along the mesa trail but thankfully we didn’t encounter any. The rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, and lizards are plentiful here and it is claimed birders can view over 30 different species of birds on a good day.

When we heard the thunder we cut our hike short, not even halfway to the La Ventana Natural Arch. On the way back down the trail we ran into to a young man and his grandfather just picking up the trail. The old man complained about how sharp the lava was to walk on and they were expecting an easier time of it up on the mesa. Brochures didn’t encourage anyone to hike up there with looming thunderstorms but they headed out anyway.

We went back to our picnic table. Joe and I tossed around the idea of illegal camping there overnight, we weren’t in sight of the highway, but the thought of getting to see Andrew before the day was over won out and we headed for San Rafael. I was supposed to give Andrew some notice before I arrived but I wasn’t able to because we didn’t have any phone service. He was a little taken aback when I informed him we were already at WallyWorld in Grants. “Oh, wow,” he said, but agreed to meet us in 15 minutes.

We stayed camped in the backyard of Andrew’s parents house. They are both gone now, parents of a dozen children, all raised in this tiny town of 700 people. All his brothers and sister keep this beautiful home like a shrine to their parents. They had a party just the night before to celebrate a fortieth birthday. Andrew and I spent a lot of time reminiscing about our days in Alaska. Andrew and I were hairdressers for Jon Anthony Salons in Anchorage. He knows me so well, has known me even longer than Joe, and I guess outside of some people in Nashville, he is my oldest friend. No one makes me giggle but Andrew. He always cooks up great meals and we stay up late and discuss naughty subjects all night.

Happy Trails,

Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel: Quemado Lake

2009-09-22T18:40:00.000-07:00

Subject: Beatlick TR: 6Quemado Lake
Date: Sep 2, 2009 12:35 PM

Next morning we woke up to find two big trailers and one modest tent in the campground. We passed a man in the tent and he struck up a conversation. Turns out he is the great grandson of the first homesteader in the area. He told us all about the Pueblo Creek and how it used to be full of fish. He described the big wash outs that come these days during the rainy season. He said all the property around this area now belongs to the US Forestry Service. I guess he still enjoys coming out to visit the old homestead and remembering better days.

We took the interpretive trail right there in the campground. It featured some sites where the Pueblo Indians used to live. It was a short walk, but at least we did get to see some semblance of where the Indians lived. All the guides that go with an interpretive trail were long gone so we just had to imagine the circumstances. Budget cuts I'm sure.

We were on the road by 11 am. We stocked up again in the little town of Reserve. Beatlick Joe now has poison ivy so we were lucky to find some Benedryl there. We headed on out towards Quemado Lake and set up camp by 1 pm. It looks like a miniature Lake Tahoe in Nevada. We had a big rig parked right next to us. We decided of course to take advantage of the free campsite parking here in a big gravel lot. There's plenty of fee area camping on down the road.

We were perched high overlooking the lake and Joe walked the trail all around it - about an hour's walk. The wildflowers are dominating the landscape right now. Despite some gloomy weather we set out for a little store and steak house we saw coming in hoping to find a land line telephone and a hot drink. We set out wearing gloves, sweaters, and neck scarves. We hiked along sharing a small umbrella with newspaper comic strips all over it. When we got to "Snuffy's" it was closed and the pay phone was out of order.

It was a long walk back, all uphill. Rains seriously set in just as soon as we reached our campsite. We settled in with a hot cup of hibiscus tea and opened a can of hot tamales. We fell asleep to the drone of the big rig's generator next door.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel: Glenwood

2009-09-10T18:44:00.000-07:00

Subject: Beatlick TR: Glenwood
Date: Aug 27, 2009 10:10 AM

Glenwood is this tiny little town once bustling from mining , sawmill, even the early aviation industries, but now a quaint conglomerate with a guest ranch, rustic cabins for rent, goat mile beauty products, an old bible camp, some art galleries, a rock shop, two bars and three restaurants – as far as I could tell.

We settled in at the free Bighorn Campground west of town and right next door to the $18 a night RV park. We had the campground to ourselves and there were about three rigs at the RV park, most looked like they were there on a semi-permanent basis.

I took a yoga class for $5 down at the Community Center taught by a British woman named Cornelia. She arrived in Glenwood seven years ago via London, Africa, and New York City. She and her husband have horses and built a labyrinth which they make available to the public.

At the Blue Front Bar and Café we found out from the locals that a nearby landowner tapped some of the hot springs on their property which they had closed to the public. Then they pumped the hot water up to their residence and set up an exclusive RV park and campground named Sundial Hot Springs. Reservations only. I tried to call the number from a pay phone by the Trading Post, but got an answering machine that said it would call back. Unfortunately cell phones don’t work in the town, so that limited communications.

In the morning we had 25-cent coffee at the Golden Girls Café. Great, I mean great biscuits. In the tiny dining room only one other table was filled. There sat a man and woman with two young children and a baby. Their car roof was covered with about a dozen gym bags of varying proportions all lashed together. One of the back tires looked like it was going to explode at any minute. I wanted to ask, "How far do you think you're going to get on that tire?"I was sure we would see them broken down further down the road. But I guess it is some kind of tribute to them that they could set that problem aside and sit down to a great breakfast.

We’re all carbed up too and ready to press on into the wilderness.
Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela Hirst

Beatlicks: Last Generation of Campers

2009-09-07T11:54:00.000-07:00

Subject: Beatlick TR3: Glenwood here we come
Date: Aug 26, 2009 12:40 PM

Last night Beatlick Joe and I sat outside to watch the sky. It was too dark to see the cow patties but we got lucky and missed most of them. I haven’t really spent that much time looking at the stars since Joe and I took that sailboat trip out of Zihuatanejo to Mazatlan, sailing beneath the Southern Cross. I couldn’t even find the Big Dipper, but in my defense the stars were so numerous that it was lost in the masses.

You know if you look up into the sky long enough you will definitely see something that makes you want to scratch your head. Joe and I both saw a little red star that seemed to pulse and quiver around, not really travel, but definitely move incrementally in all directions. We watched the blinking lights of airplanes traverse the whole horizon and the summer heat lightning illuminate the sky off towards Silver City.

Next morning we pulled out and learned a lot more about the Bubbles at the Ranger Station. The Bubbles don’t exist anymore – dried up years ago. All our information was too old truthfully. We also learned from the rangers that the road to the hot springs was closed because of squatters.

Apparently a small enclave was living there and word got out that an infant had died up there. Upon further investigation it was discovered that the people were poaching long horn sheep for sustenance. They were run out and the road was closed forever.

The young female ranger that came to our campground told me squatting is still a problem. She had a work crew back near the springs to clear brush recently when she discovered an intact “house” that someone had constructed for themselves out there. Now for her own protection she’s not allowed to go back there to work.

She also said the rangers who work in this area do not restore the hot springs after a flood. So maybe the person in that “house” is the one who attempted to restore one of the pools. Or maybe the person whose blanket I now own did it. The smaller pool near that camp was by far the cleanest and best being constructed all out of rocks without mud.

That camper who left the blanket had sustained himself or herself with a twenty-pound bag of organic oatmeal. I know because the bag was left there as trash along with the blanket, pan, backpack and tarp.

So, only problem campers, floods, and a need for constant restoration, it’s easy to see why these campgrounds can be cut from the Federal budget or simply diminished to hiking trails. In this economic climate it’s just a matter of time – especially when there is the pristine Cat Walk hiking experience fifteen miles down the road with only picnic grounds to maintain.

Beatlick Joe says we are probably the last generation of campers.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela Hirst

Peace on the Home Front

2009-09-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

[From Bill Harris in response to As the World Turns: America Left Behind (Pacific Free Press, Bellaciao 9/6/09). See his blog “Peace on the Home Front” at http://antinomian-peacenik.blogspot.com.]

Debaters debate the two wars as if Nixon’s civil war on Woodstock Nation didn’t yet run amok. One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights or to Cuba for political prisoners. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to ongoing persecution of hippies, radicals, and non-whites under banner of the war on drugs. If we’re all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.

The drug czar’s Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as lives are flushed down expensive tubes. There’s trouble on the border. My shaman’s second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God’s gift. God didn’t screw up. Canadian Marc Emery sold seeds that enable American farmers to outcompete cartels with superior domestic herb. He is being extradited to prison, for doing what government wishes it could do, reduce demand for Mexican.

The constitutionality of the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) derives from an interstate commerce clause. Only by this authority does it reincarnate Al Capone, endanger homeland security, and throw good money after bad. Official policy is to eradicate, not tax, the number-one cash crop in the land. America rejected prohibition, but it’s back. Apparently, SWAT teams don’t need no stinking amendment. Father, forgive those who make it their business to know not what they do.

Nixon promised that the Schafer Commission would support the criminalization of his enemies, but it didn’t. No matter, the witch-hunt was on. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA halted all research and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use, period.

The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote, which functions like LSD. Americans shouldn’t need a specific church membership to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. Denial of entheogen sacrament to any American, for mediation of communion with his or her maker, precludes free exercise of religious liberty.

Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.

Common-law must hold that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers decreed that the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable. Socrates said to know your self. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers’ self-exploration.

Beatlick Travel: San Francisco Hot Springs

2009-09-05T12:28:00.000-07:00

Subject: Beatlick TR2
Date: Aug 25, 2009 1:01 PM

Rattlesnakes and the Elusive Bubbles

Next morning we were up early and headed to the trailhead of the San Francisco Hot springs. A cursory look at the hiker notes gave warnings of the rattlesnakes so we had our walking sticks in hand and heavy boots on foot. It was sunny and hot already with a slight cool breeze. Beatlick Joe has been researching the elusive Bubbles hot springs for five years or more. We have found the two small pools on a trail that is relatively approachable, but never the Bubbles.

According to his information the Bubbles pool is about half a mile further downstream of the two pools we are familiar with and you have to cross the San Francisco River a few times to get there. It’s a fairly arduous hike but fine for us, we can hike six miles without blinking. We came to the first river crossing and Joe decided to stay on the eastern side of the river where the Bubbles are. That made me nervous because I knew what to expect taking the old path, but as usual, the minute I get comfortable with anything Joe will always push the envelope to constantly challenge me. So rather than go it alone the old familiar way, I had to fall in line behind him.

Soon we came to an abandoned campsite. Underneath a tarp was a really nice Indian blanket. We made a mental note of the camp and decided to come back and get that nice blanket.

When we came to the first river crossing I changed into my plastic shoes and Joe put on some sturdy sandals. This way we easily walked in the river. Well we hiked and we waded, we crossed the river and hiked some more. For over three hours we looked for the
Bubbles going further and further back into the woods. We saw numerous indications of serious flooding in the last five years and I began to have serious doubts that the Bubbles exist anymore. We only gave up when we hit a trail where the rattlesnakes made themselves apparent with a loud rattling.

“That’s all the information I need,” I said and made an about face. I looked back at Joe; he was woefully looking back at the towering rock face ahead. I know he was still visualizing those hot springs.

“Go ahead if you want to; I’ll wait here for you here.”

He was still determined to go.

“Don’t you want to take those sandals off? At least put your boots back on so the snakes can’t bite your ankles.”

He paused.

“Well, I’ve waited long enough to give them a chance to crawl away,” he said and then he set out again, still in his sandals. But on his second step a rattlesnake alarm went off with such alarming intensity that it seemed only prudent to turn back.

So we retraced all our steps and crossings back to the familiar San Francisco pools and we were shocked at what we found. The trail we had taken five years ago was completely obliterated; even the tree where we hung our clothes was gone. The brush was so compact and dense that we walked upstream and took an alternate path back to our campsite.

Obviously interest in the springs has fallen off so greatly that the trail has disappeared. First bureaucrats made it so difficult to reach the springs (once you could drive there but the road is now blocked off), then the floods and Mother Nature have taken their final toll.

Someone has haphazardly tried to rock off the pools again, but they are so much smaller and funky that I didn’t dare step foot in them. The bottoms were solid mud.

Now it was a wonderful hike, we tramped around for over six hours, and it was fun encountering all the cows along the way, but I doubt we’ll ever pass this way again. Just like the campgrounds are fading away, so are so many of these natural wonders. The gifts of nature blocked off from hikers and tourists, the land leased to ranchers, slowly these natural blessings are fading away before my eyes.

On a lighter note we do always come away from the San Francisco Hot Springs with something. Once I found a stylish pair of black sunglasses with rhinestones at the pools. Once at the campground Joe found a good pair of tennis shoes and he used them for work shoes for months. This time we found that abandoned campsite with an empty backpack, pot, and the Indian blanket underneath a tarp. I kept the blanket. It will take a while to get all the goat heads and cockle burrs out of it but I am pleased with it and consider the hike a grand success even though we never found the illusive Bubbles.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Mansel: Media from Dante to the Lost and Found

2009-08-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

Chris Mansel's new blog: Media From Dante to the Lost and Found uses
the blog technology as well as any I have seen. Chris mines the net
for a range of interests so broad it is difficult to believe one
person covers all this terrain, and he has compiled these excerpts and
links in a little over a week. We can only imagine what the site will
be like in a few months.

Jake Berry

Explore for yourself at:

http://mediafromdantetothelostandfound.blogspot.com

Beatlicks: On the Road Again

2009-08-23T10:50:00.000-07:00

Subject: Beatlick Travel Report 1: Out of Las Cruces
Date: Aug 20, 2009 9:52 AM
Out of Las Cruces

This time pulling out of Las Cruces for the open road seemed like a small miracle. So many commitments and obstacles are behind us, but it’s a long time coming and I am grateful, just grateful to finally be off.

The van has been officially blessed by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church! Then Father Gabriel threw a few drops of rose water on Joe and me as well for good measure. We had a final meal with our good friend/mechanic/greatest enabler Michael Elliott in Old Mesilla. On the way out we stopped in at the cultural center to pay our respects to Denise Chavez, Joe’s old college friend. Then we were gone.

We drove west toward Deming to stock up at Wally World, then picked up Highway 180 toward Silver City and beyond to the San Francisco Hot Springs Campground. When we started smelling skunk and seeing signs to watch out for elk we knew we were headed towards the wilderness. On roads like 180 you can drive for hours through vast distances unchanged since the wagon trains went through. We saw the occasional small road left, due west to Arizona, and hardly a car passed us by.

Right before mile marker 58 we turned into the San Francisco Hot Springs Campground, just at sunset. The campground is now host to a herd of cows. We set up camp without disturbing them too greatly, got out the crackers, peanut butter, pepperoni and beer. I took the time to really look at one of those cows, as it was looking at me, just luxuriated in that moment taking the time to really look at that sweet gentle cow. And it will be rewarded for all its sweetness and gentleness by being eaten. Sad, but they are delicious.

After the cows settled down there wasn’t a single sound. Stillness. No barking dogs. Radios. Sirens. Weird. Joe got out his hand cranked radio and we picked up this awesome station 107 playing all the old 70s and 80s music. It was all those love songs that used to make me so sad back in the old days when I was a single parent, so lost and lonely. But to hear all those songs now, with Joe so near, just filled my heart.

I hit the top bunk early; it was a long and hot drive. I went to sleep with Joe saying, “Pamela you should see all these stars!” I peered out the screen window from my bunk and saw the sky looking like fireworks in freeze frame.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Mansel: Smoke Over The Mountains of Santa Cruz

2009-08-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

...

wildfires burning stretching from tree to tree
horrors in ashy decay, dark paths coming soon
birds flying away, fireman dug in backs against the sea
california and the mountains of santa cruz

c-130's passing overhead, the pilots' home ablaze
possessions held overhead over highway smoke
cameramen focus on the children running away
scavengers move across police lines that broke

authorities say make way for the politician's motorcade
they've brought a six pack of bottled water and sincerity
not since the boys in the backroom and promises made
have the politics been so cut dry and full of clarity

chorus:

lives are in danger but in other news
no injuries reported from sky views
There's smoke over the mountains of Santa Cruz
There's smoke over the mountains of Santa Cruz

- Chris (christophermansel@hotmail.com)

COMMON SENSE: NATIONAL HEALTH CARE

2009-07-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

[JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.]

By Jack Random

Tom Brokaw: Is health care in America a privilege, a right or a responsibility?
John McCain: I think it’s a responsibility.
Barack Obama: Well I think it should be a right for every American.

Presidential Debate, October 7, 2008.

“Health insurers and drug makers have showered members of the 111th Congress with millions in campaign contributions over the last four years, with a special focus on leaders who will play major roles in shaping health-care legislation, according to a study to be released tomorrow.”

Dan Eggen, Washington Post, March 8, 2009.

The reason we do not have national health care, like the reason we cannot control military spending and the reason we remain dependent on foreign oil, can be summarized in one word: money.

No, it is not the cost of national health care that prevents us from achieving what every other advanced nation has already achieved for there are no objective analyses (as opposed to those paid for by the healthcare industry) that fail to find billions and trillions in savings compounded over the years of implementation.

It is rather the money that is piped into the political system by private corporations with a vested interest in preserving a cash cow that prevents us from achieving this fundamental goal: affordable healthcare for all our citizens.

We have heard the numbers ad infinitum ad nauseam. We hear Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats cynically attempting to transform the healthcare debate into yet another attack on illegal immigrants. It is a strategy as old as the Appalachians and as useful as a three-legged ass: Divide and conquer. We don’t want to pay for them. But we are paying for them. We are paying for them in every crowded emergency room in every public hospital across the nation. As long as medical ethics and the laws of common decency compel doctors and nurses to treat the ill and needy it will always be so. We should want it no other way if for no other reason but that we may find ourselves or our loved ones in the circumstance of need at some time in our lives.

Few among us are so wealthy that we could bear the cost of a major operation or a prolonged illness without generous assistance. It is then when we are most in need that we invariably discover the shortcomings of our healthcare system. Every insurance agency and every corporate care provider has a staff of skilled professionals dedicated to defining the limits of our coverage and protecting the profit margin.

It is only common sense.

We do not need any more statistics or case studies to tell us what we already know. We only need a healthy dose of common sense – the kind our grandparents had before the system pumped them so full of drugs they can hardly think.

Common sense tells us that profit motivated corporations may be good for selling toys and trinkets but they are poorly designed to protect the health of our citizens.

Common sense tells us that when corporations profit from illness and dependency they have no incentive to promote wellness.

Common sense tells us: the larger the pool of coverage, the lower the costs for all. The very concept of health insurance is that those who are well will pay for those who are in need. Insurance companies strive to represent only the healthy. Should you ever have a need you are placed in a separate group (high risk) and rates quickly become impossible to pay.

Common sense tells us denying coverage to those who need it is a practice that has no place in the healthcare profession.

Common sense tells us that when our medical and pharmaceutical industries are in the business of making money, they will sell us drugs and treatments we do not need and deny us remedies that do not pay.

Common sense tells us that an unregulated “free market” health and medical care industry, like the financial institutions before them, will follow the path of greed and avarice until it breaks the bank and the system crashes unless meaningful reform is enacted.

It is unfortunate that our Supreme Court with a corporate bias perhaps unprecedented in history has zealously protected unlimited corporate contributions to political candidates and office holders under the guise of “free speech.” The same court (only the names have changed) that refused to recognize a fundamental right to vote (see Bush V. Gore 2000) has defined monetary contributions as constitutionally protected speech.

Common sense tells us that politicians will serve the hand that feeds them rather than the interests of the people they represent unless public outcry is so overwhelming it threatens their hold on power.

I do not know all the particulars of the Obama healthcare proposal but common sense tells me this: The medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industry and their lackeys in congress would not be fighting so hard to defeat if it was not a meaningful step in the right direction.

One last caveat: The Obama proposal is not National Health Care and that is unfortunate. That is the goal and this reform even if it passes will fall well short. But common sense tells me we have to take the first step before we can take the second.

The first step is what is commonly referred to as the public option. Let Joe the Plumber and all those like him who secretly or openly decry Social Security and Medicare as a socialist conspiracy take the private option and let them pay the price.

Common sense tells me the public option will win.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). HE IS A COLUMNIST FOR THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS – WORLD EDITION. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Beatlick Joe & Orwell's Down & Out

2009-07-16T15:15:00.000-07:00

I read this book by Orwell recently and extracted this story about a drug deal. Joe Speer.

Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933 by George Orwell

George has a friend Charlie who tells him a story about a rich miser named Roucolle who came to a bad end through putting his money into a wildcat scheme. One day a Jew appeared with a first-rate plan for smuggling cocaine into England. The miser was approached by a Pole willing to put up 4,000 francs if Roucolle put up 6,000. His innards churn at the possibility of making a small fortune from the happy dust and yet he was loath to risk the money. After much cajoling he at last slit open the mattress where his money was concealed and handed it over. The Jew delivered the goods and promptly vanished. Such deals are risky because of spies in the quarter or chicanery.

The next morning the police raided the hotel and began working their way up the floors. A packet of blow was on the table with no place to hide it and no chance of escape. The Pole wanted to throw the nose candy out the window but Roucolle would go to prison rather than throw his money away. The miser had an idea. He had a dozen tins of face-powder. The powder was thrown out and the cocaine substituted and left openly on the table. The police arrived and searched the flat to no avail. As they prepared to depart the inspector noticed the tins.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Face-powder,” said Roucolle, moaning and groaning. The two men were arrested and led off to the police station. A tin was sent to be analyzed. When the results came back from the lab it was determined not to be a drug.

“Mais, alors, what is it then?”

“Face-powder.” Roucolle and the Pole were released at once. They had been double-crossed. The Pole was glad to be off the hook but the old miser was livid. Three days later he suffered a stroke and died of a broken heart.

Prayer for Peltier: July 28, 2009

2009-07-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

A Message for AIM: Please post for immediate release.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) and AIM-WEST of San Francisco invites you the general public for an early morning SUN RISE PRAYER VIGIL and RALLY on Tuesday, July 28, 2009 calling for the Freedom of Leonard Peltier.

On Tuesday, July 28th the US Parole Commission in Lewisburg, Penn. will review the case of Leonard Peltier, held in prison for over three decades. This is the best opportunity Leonard will get during his entire period of incarceration to a fair review of his case before the US Parole Commission. The whole world is watching and waiting!

Please join with us in solidarity with Leonard, his family and relations, friends and supporters from around the world on this day and let us pray for an open mind, and to let the healing of America begin.

The general public is invited to join with us in San Francisco at the Federal Building 450 Golden Gate Avenue for an early morning SUN -RISE PRAYER VIGIL beginning at 6 am until 3 pm. All Drummers and Singers, Dancers, Community Youth and Elders, solidarity organizations and NGO’s are urged to join with us to celebrate this special occasion. Religious groups and social movements are also encouraged to attend this spiritual gathering and stand together hand in hand, burning sacred sage, being of one mind in Peace calling upon the US Parole Commission to finally release Leonard Peltier from three decades of incarceration for a crime he did not commit!

There will be special invited speakers, and the media and press are welcome to cover the event.

The public is encouraged to immediately call today the office of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, in SF at 415-556-4862 to remind her to write a letter to the US Parole Commission by July 14th just as she did in August 1993 to Attorney General Janet Reno (see attached) asking for a review of the circumstances behind this case in view of discrepancies in handling it’s process. Congresswoman Pelosi is also invited to address the VIGIL on July 28 in SF if she happens to be in the CITY. The SF County Board of Supervisor’s are also encouraged to come and support these efforts for Leonard’s release from prison.

This is a peaceful and non-violent gathering on behalf of Leonard and his family and to always be respectful and honorable in seeking his freedom. For more information call at 415-577-1492.

Thank You All My Relations!

Antonio Gonzales
AIM-WEST Director

eltonyg@earthlink.net
www.aimwest.info
www.aimovement.org

BEATLICKS FINAL REPORT: Raining Oil in Texas

2009-07-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

Subject: Beatlick final travel report
Date: Jun 27, 2009 7:00 PM

Beatlick Joe and I arraived in Las Cruces before midnight Friday the 27th and snuggled into the corner of the Wal-Mart parking lot where Joe used to work.

This seems like a good time to close my reports for now. We'll be house sitting in Las Cruces most of the summer with little to report. We'll be reporting from Taos NM later in the summer and I want to document going solar with the van next winter before we head out for Mexico.

Thanks to all who have helped us along the way. We're enjoying our new laptop wi-fi compatible, it's making life a lot easier. The van made it back in great shape, no problems whatsoever except getting pulled over in Texas for not having a light over my license plate.

Also one weird thing that happened to us in Texas, we were less than 100 miles north of San Antonio I think when I had to ask Joe, "Is it my imagination or is it raining oil?"

"It seems to be raining oil." I don't know what was going on but the air became so acrid and then a thin veil of oil was all over the windshield. We had to roll up the windows the smell was so bad. I can't believe what ever was going on out there was even legal. No one could live with that atmospheric condition for long. But we were out of it in about five minutes.

We spent one night in Austin at a poetry open mic. What a town of talent, Austin, the best town in Texas.

Well happy trails to all, peace and love. We'll be seeing you all later on down the line.

Beatlick Pamela

Mind of Mansel: 4th of July

2009-07-06T14:43:00.001-07:00

"July 4 and there's fireworks in the skies, too many flames to follow like bullets piercing sandy eyes, half an ocean, quite a world away as the political mandala turns, erupting and spinning bodies of spent flesh will be burning, the constitution is locked away and never saw bloodshed, never saw the nightmares in a soldier's head, emergency rooms fill up with accidents, helicopters with wounded, blood for blood."

Chris Mansel

Beatlick Travel Report: The Nashville House

2009-06-23T18:41:00.000-07:00

Subject: Beatlick TR: Out of Nashville
Date: Jun 17, 2009 6:39 AM

Just a quick report to say the Nashville episode is over, the house is completely restored, and my tenants were painting as I pulled out of the driveway. As much as I hated coming to Nashville, my heart was breaking as I left. It was so good to see all these old friends, and you really learn who your friends are when you need as much help as I did getting my mother's home back in order. New bathroom, new roof, and I personally loaded 10.000 pounds of roofing debris along with Joe, my sister and her husband, and a 10-year-old boy named Austin. He works with his dad the roofer and he worked as hard as anybody.

Plans are to arrive back in Las Cruces by the 30th of June, next day will be my birthday. And to all those we didn't get to see, time just slipped away.

It's raining AGAIN and I am full of chigger bites, memorances of Nashville.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Subject: Beatlick TR: All but the money
Date: Jun 7, 2009 2:34 PM

My little house looks so much better. Couldn't have done it without my sister and brother-in-law who got all the helpers. There is a new bathroom, the house has been pressure washed and sparkles, the sidewalk is fixed, the back porch repaired, the floors are beautiful, the kitchen sink has new drains and paper in the cupboards, and I have only the roof to go and that requires getting paid by the insurance company.

This has been my most discouraging hurdle and I can't help remembering my friend Dana admonishing me: Let's see how far the new pollyanna attitude (my words) will be serving you in a couple of weeks and believe me I am being tested.

The insurance company would have me believe that they mailed me a check twice, that it is lost in the mail, and that they routinely mail out thousands of dollars in checks without registering or tracking them.

I'm waiting on a check that was supposed to have been sent May 28. Then the agent tells me the check was returned to her office. Excuse me. I didn't return it. Did the post man put it in the wrong box? No way to know. She says she put it in the mail on Wednesday. By Saturday there is still no check and she mailed it from Nashville.

So now I am dealing with this stress, this kind of cancer creating stress that occurs when you are getting jacked around and have no recourse. I call Friday, no check, and she informs me she is going on vacation. She'll "red flag" my account and I can speak to the manager on Monday. This is Sunday and I have truly struggled to keep my composure over this when I believe this woman is insulting my intelligence.

So I am at an impasse for now. I won't even be able to oversee putting on the roof as I have my commitments back in Las Cruces. So here I sit. The house is ready, all but for the roof and siding, and no money.

Down but not out.

Beatlick Pamela

Subject: Beatlick Travel Report: The house rents!
Date: May 31, 2009 6:21 PM

Spending that time out on the Slabs in California taught me how to live without water. I needed that knowledge. Today for the first time in a month I took a bath in my own house and used the toilet! We have come such a long way and that poor plumber has suffered plenty right along with me.

I was the first one under the house, been under there at night in the dark with a flash light, daylight too, making SURE, seeing for myself what the situation is. There is so much to learn about the water. When you turn it off, turn off the water heater first, or you will burn up your water heater like I did. And when you turn it back on, the water I mean, do it gently. We had the toilet set, the sink ready to go, turned the crank on the water meter and blew out a pipe under the house. So it was three more days getting that fixed. I crawled under the house again and found the leak - discouraging - but we persevered.

I have worked hard to keep my good attitude and it has paid off. I have scrubbed every square inch of the house giving it all I've got, and waited, waited patiently. As I was cleaning the floors in my mother's room, one millimeter at a time, I heard some voices calling from the front door." Did you get my email?" my cousin Joan called. And there walked into my house the answer to my prayers. Joan is on my mailing list. She had brought her niece and my second cousin once removed, on my father's side of the family as we say here in the South, who is looking for a house. She loved my house, I loved her for loving it, and the for rent sign has been taken down!

I still have to get a roof on and get the aluminum siding fixed on one side, and then I can turn the keys over. The house will be let on July 1, my birthday. My father Howard Kennedy Adams, bought the house in 1949. My new tenant is a Kennedy, too. My sister and I cried in each other's arms thinking how happy it would make my mother to know a Kennedy is back on Kipling Drive. Actually my sister said my mother has probably orchestrated the whole scenario from heaven. Maybe so.

I hope to be back in Las Cruces for my doctor's appointment on June 23. It's hard to believe how this all has turned out. I really didn't worry that much, just keep trusting and keeping the faith, and doing all I can to expedite the situation. I couldn't have found a bottle with a genie in it to offer me free wishes and chosen a better couple to rent to. They have an English bull dog and the next door neighbors have an American bull dog. Maybe there will be some puppy love going on before long.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Subject: Beatlick TR: Nashville work continues
Date: May 23, 2009 6:14 PM

Deep in Nash country the work continues. I still wonder at the fact I am here and with so much work ahead of me. Little did I suspect that the work would be so great or that I would have thousands of insurance dollars to help me see it through. My little house has had a hysterectomy, the bathroom work continues. I didn't know to turn the hot water heater off when I shut off the water so I discovered yesterday that the hot water heater has been ruined. I casually mentioned it to my new old neighbor Joel who along with his wife has moved back into his house next door to me after eight years. It's hard to say who has the most work ahead of them, Joel or myself. His house was really trashed.

He was at my front door this morning to tell me he could fix my water heater. I didn't even know he was a heating and air conditioning technician. I just can't believe my luck. I bought two new elements for a few dollars and the system was back up and running within a few hours.

My sister and brother-in-law brought the woman who is redoing the bathroom floor over this morning. Yes a female and she has got an enviable tool belt I'm here to tell you. My sister helped her out last month so she has ripped out the toilet and sink and redone the bathroom floor for NOTHING. Can you believe this stuff? My brother-in-law has been beside her every step of the way, brought over the plumbers, and went to Home Depot for all the building materials. It is all so amazing.

As we work on the house the van is parked FEMA trailer style in the driveway and that is where we sleep at night. Every time I walk down the hill to the store I retrace the steps that I walked to elementary school. Yesterday evening I stood at the very place where my father's body flew out of his car and hit the ground when he was struck and killed by a truck driver in 1956.

This is some kind of accounting for me, it's traumatic and sad to see the house in this shape. This little plot of ground is all I have except for my van and the burial plot next to mama out at the cemetery. So I am trying to make things right, make mama proud. Like the bathroom. The problem there was that the big pipe where the toilet is supposed to be connected has been six inches too far below the floor, I guess for sixty years. Someone put something like a coffee can on top of the pipe and stuffed old newspapers and plastic bags around it to prop it up and then they set the toilet on top of all that.

Poor work, crap work, no wonder it never worked right all those years. I also found up there are four layers of shingles on the roof. Three is the legal limit. Again somebody took advantage of mama, did a poor job. I can see mama now out in the yard complaining, "I'm just a poor old widow woman."

So it is a long haul to get it all right and it is stressful to wait all this out but I believe I am doing it with a small degree of grace. I have learned and continue to learn if I just stay calm and believe in the best it is all going to work out. I'm going through something here, a mourning for the past, I can hardly find any distinguishing landmarks around the old neighborhood anymore. I'm not young anymore and time has moved on. Proust says all those memories where just little slivers of time, moments now lost.

I have a wonderful new world on the road to get back too and I am eager to begin, but not yet, not yet.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

SOMETHING HAPPENING HERE: The Iranian Uprising

2009-06-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

In 2003 the Jazzman proposed a March of Silence to protest the war on terror in an essay entitled Code of Silence (The Jazzman Chronicles, Volume 2: The War Chronicles). More recently I posted a fictional account of a March of Silence in a political novella posted on Buzzle.com (A Patriot Dirge by Jack Random). I was fascinated to see that the Iranian election protests adopted that tactic to great effect.

The following is an exchange in response to "Something Happening Here: Iranian Elections and Funding the War" posted on Bela Ciao and the National Free Press - World Edition:

The truth is the US is funding the Iranian unrest.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1543798/US-funds-terror-groups-to-sow-chaos-in-Iran.html

The truth is there is not a dimes worth of difference between the parties in DC and anyone who still believe there are two parties is foolish. And if you still don’t believe that, ask Jonathan Turley.

The truth is Obama is just another puppet for the powers that be- the powers who controlled bush2, Clinton and bush 1.

The truth is the US Congress is subservient to israel and AIPAC.

While all this ’new awakening’ sounds nice on the surface, the truth is people are deeper in sleep than they were during the bush crime spree in the last 8 years. Anon.

---

While I am sympathetic to your general point of view I think you’ll need better documentation to support your assertions. The source you cite in support of your view that the US is funding Iranian unrest is dated February 2007. There is widespread recognition that the Bush administration had secret operations in Iran (such as funding fringe militants as cited here) but we do not have documentation that those ill-conceived operations (reminiscent of our backing jihadists in Afghanistan) were continued under Obama. I would not be shocked if they were continued but documentation to that effect would be powerful. I would hope that Obama is smarter, wiser and more scrupulous than the Bush Neocons.

On the "dimes worth of difference" (a citation of the Counterpunch book?) I am again sympathetic. My hope is that the dime makes a difference and that Obama will eventually prove transformational in the FDR sense. I would be interested in reading Turley’s comments on this point. The hope here is that the Turleys of the world will engage the system as independents or third party candidates — not in the traditional symbolic run for the White House but in a realistic targeted run for congress. (If Ventura can win a governorship, why not Turley for the Senate?)

On AIPAC’s influence in congress, it is a powerful lobby but my own opinion would fall well short of the assertion that congress is subservient. There is a progressive movement in Israel and in the Jewish American community. We need to support them and work toward defeating politicians who place the demands of the Jewish right over the needs of their constituents. Jazz.

---

Okay how about this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/17/obama-iran-twitter

The Obama administration, while insisting it is not meddling in Iran, yesterday confirmed it had asked Twitter to remain open to help anti-government protesters.

The company had planned a temporary shutdown to overhaul its service in the middle of the night on Monday but the US state department put in a request to postpone this.

Many protesters have being using Twitter to spread information about rallies and to share news.

or this:

http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize-iran-via-twitter/

"....Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites....."

....article continues.

People have been whipped up into froths before to bring about social change. One only need look to Russia, China and Cuba to see what ’popular revolution’ can really mean beneath the rhetoric. People protesting is nice and all, but let’s look at the source of the instigators.

What troubles me most is all the US has the gall to be ranting about election fraud in Iran. Where were these "election vigilantes" in 2000 and 2004 when the presidential election was given to the loser? Hmmm?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has taken a hard line against Israel, its incessant meddling and it’s self-proclaimed ’right to defend itself’ by slaughtering others in obscene disproportionate measure, particularly Palestinians. Israel’s constant and tiresome insistence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon has been proven to be false numerous times. And we haven’t even touched upon the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons which it will not allow UN Inspectors to verify. Israel is not even a signatory to the NNPT. Hypocrisy is their hallmark in this matter.

That Israel and the US are meddling in the affairs of Iran is about as obvious as it can get and particularly because of the timing (an election). I don’t recall seeing any mass protests prior to the election. one would think if the people were really so dissatisfied, they would have been out in throngs at any time, not just during an election.

What the world really needs to wake up to is the fact that destabilization is the order of the day. It’s been this way with Iraq and Afghanistan. it was never "weapons of mass BS" nor nuclear quest, nor ’democracy’, nor anything else. It is and has always been destabilization of the region in order to destroy the countries so as to exploit the resources, namely OIL and GAS and for the benefit of the US/ISRAEL.

Regarding the dimes worth or difference. I have little faith in the power of a dime these days. I believe with my eyes. It’s safer that way. Anon.

---

Once again we are largely in agreement on the greater picture but we disagree on the finer points of the situation in Iran.

I am aware of the "Twitter Revolution" and the fact that the US State Department requested that Twitter remain open to facilitate its use in Iran. In my judgment that is meddling and it was a mistake but it is a far cry from sponsoring Black Ops and instigating violence as the Bush administration did.

I am no defender of the Israeli government. They will do everything in their power (without risking US sponsorship) to destabilize Iran. Ultimately however anything that has the mark of Israel or America will backfire because in the age of information technology it will become known and the people of Iran (like the people of any nation) will recognize and reject it.

The question remains who/what is behind the mass electoral protests in Iran? You believe it is foreign intervention (Israel, Britain, the US). I believe that while there is certainly some level of foreign meddling the uprising has its roots in the will of the people.

We are in agreement on the hypocrisy of America crying "election fraud" after the elections of 2000 and 2004. We are largely in agreement on Iraq and Afghanistan. We are in agreement on the hypocrisy of Israel (and the US) on nuclear policy. We are in agreement that Israel’s actions against the Palestinians are criminal. We may not however be in agreement on our assessment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From my perspective, he is no friend to the Palestinian cause. He is a front man for hardline Islamists who use anti-western and anti-Israeli rhetoric (however justified) to manipulate public sentiment. Though he is only a figurehead, Iran and Palestine and the cause of peace in the Middle East would better served without him. He is a holocaust denier, a political opportunist and a firebrand. Enough of Ahmadinejad! The Supreme Ayatollah may save his "presidency" but he has lost the people and his credibility on the world stage. Jazz.