Scary Democracy Slurred, Fake Debates, and Zombie Stripper Newscasters

(Happy Halloween! Don't fear the Cheney.)

       I have absolutely no idea why I thought to watch a live webcast of Democracy Now on October 30th, 2007. I used to watch it regularly but had not in many months. Perhaps since finding out my local (blank) categorized Democracynow.org to be a porn site and blocked it.

       It was around that time that I had lost interest. I assumed if there was any merit to that listing or classification, it was because Amy Goodman had let her show follow that well worn path that Phil Donahue’s had gone down more than once.

       That path being to balance entire episodes devoted to things like World Peace, to be interspersed with ones about bikini-clad Jello wrestlers, complete with the gratuitous “dramatic” re-enactments live on stage. I doubt that still would be far enough to qualify as porn, but it was readily conceivable that the show might have gone that route, and that alone could be disturbing enough for some to qualify for its being blocked as porn.

       Its not that that bothered me so much as to the fact that, if that was the case, I never got to see any of those kinds of episodes. Yes, I still looked forward to seeing “wild and craaazzy guys,” (as Steve Martin might term it) Octa or Septagenarians like Noam Chomsky or Mike Gravel stepping up and doing their “free speech” things, but I wondered which things I kept missing out on that, for ratings sake, could possibly have balanced something like that out.

       I was certain it must have been something like Paris Hilton dramatically re-enacting her questioning by police (ala the police questioning scene in the movie "Fatal Attraction") or better yet with Britney Spears playing the part of Paris Hilton in that, um, dramatization.

       What I was seeing made me wonder about what I must have been missing to keep that show on the air when all it seemed to have was people talking about war, the erosion of rights, democracy, etc, etc, blah blah blah. I could not even tell anymore from watching it when it was a ratings month!

       Sure I could have tuned in everyday so as never to miss any of those sizzling ratings bait episodes with more skin showing than just Noam Chomsky going tieless (please, for him that was plenty), that justified its pornographic rating, but who has the time?

       But no, the one time I turn it back on again, I see Amy Goodman slurring just about every other word. Because of the time difference, I was about to go to sleep, (not that other millions Americans aren’t going to sleep at 8 am EST even without a time difference), but that was way too sad for me to watch just before going to sleep. “Damn, that’s sad,” I thought, “She must have had a stroke. Too depressing to watch live,” seeing her seemingly struggling to talk coherently.

       Later in the day, I found out my timing was as impeccably slightly off as always and I must had tuned in just after the “No, I did NOT have a stroke” speech that she began the show with. Well, that would have cleared that up.

       I write this because of something she said in her “No, I did NOT have a stroke” news article to tell or reassure people like me (who missed that part of the show) from feeling too sad from seeing that to watch her show anymore.

       The sentence in that article that got to me was “Why are we shielded from seeing people with flaws and imperfections on TV?”

       While she was referring to physical flaws, those absent from beauty-queen types, what Don Henley referred to as the “bubble headed bleach blonde who comes on at five” newscasters, I had to ask myself, are they not flawed too? Doth they not have sentences to mangle, facts to tangle, and “democracies now” of their own to slur?

       Should we, in our drive for equality of opportunity, deprive the mentally challenged newscaster types who, but for living off of their good looks, would be without a means to support themselves in the style they have been accustomed to in a culture based entirely around superficiality and “looking good”?

       One of the rare times I have watched CNN in recent years was on the occasion of the night of the “Election 2006” coverage (Note: and for all the good that change of “parties” has done and the “differences” it wrought!) That was only one of two times I had tried to watch a cable news channel recently and I certainly did not feel I was “shielded from seeing people with flaws and imperfections on TV.”

       Not in the least. I watched as a very attractive female newscaster, whose job it was to report on what was considered widely at the time a “very important” election of “historic importance” to the “direction of the country.” Her inability to be able to tell, despite being repeatedly corrected (on the air mind you) by her “know-it-all” male co-anchor, that she was mistaken in saying that there were 100 Representatives and 435 Senators in Congress, (more or less because those numbers and those Houses she kept mixing up), such a “flaw” was clearly visible.

       I felt just as sorry for that newscaster (as for Amy’s speech impairment) when she got it wrong for the third time. I almost expected her, if her co-host tried to correct her, yet again, for getting it wrong, yet again, to turn to him in an Alicia Silverstone Valley Girl-like tone and give him a good “WHAT-EV-ER!!!”

       I would have cheered, “you go girl, so what if you are completely misinforming the public about the constitution of their own government structure in the guise of “explaining” it to them, (just as our Representatives (all 100 of them :-) are dismantling it in the guise of “protecting and defending” it). You have reached the top of your profession in spite of your inability to seemingly make new memories, or feel any embarrassment at knowing less than most children about the Constitution of your government, despite that being a part of your job that night. You looked damn good while misinforming the public and that is all that anyone will remember or care about anyway.”

       The only other recent time I dwelled upon a News channel, it made that woman look like Edgar R. Murrow. It was of a Fox News “debate”. I put debate in quotes because it is hard to say just what it was besides an exercise in brainwashing.

       Many would say, there goes some liberal or progressive or Fox News basher throwing around extreme labels. “Brainwashing” indeed! Hmmph! No, and it was too obvious that the people themselves unlike the CNN anchor who could not make new memories, these people MUST have been aware that that was what they were doing.

       Even people who call Fox News “shameless propagandists” might have a hard time with the word “brainwashing” to describe what I saw, but let me explain it to you. Imagine a “debate” where the people seem to be arguing, not only heatedly, but fiercely, yet they are all talking over each other loudly and quickly, making the same argument and the same points.

       When the points are made so forcefully, literally at times yelled at each other, and so quickly, the “viewer” or observer is inundated and washed over by this “conversation” which is nothing of the sort, but it is not let up enough for them to think that or consider, hey, where is there an opposing viewpoint here? Not until the end, that climax just before the commercial break of reconciliation, that final orgasm of agreement just after the most heated arguing where they finally come to the “conclusion” of the rightness of each others’ and basically, their own (same) opinions. But as the producers would say, “it makes for great TV.”

       No, it makes for a great example of brainwashing, or attempted brainwashing. And none too subtle and would have made a perfect centerpiece of a trial if or when a public would be raised enough not only to realize that is bad, but the worst thing that could spew out of a television at people. Many many psychologists could have easily identified from the lack of opposing viewpoints obscuring the “discussion” or “debate” that was nothing of the sort, but merely to drill a point home into any viewers head by forcefully intimidating deliveries that the “debaters” then accepted as though they were convincing each other of things they did not believe to start with! But would you see such a criticism of it on TV, or on that channel, or even on that show itself? In America? In the age of the Murdock?

       It may seem self-evident to some that I did not agree with what they were “debating” or putting on the worst possible “arguments” against their positions, if they even admitted any contrary arguments existed. While I watched, I saw none even referred to.

       What the “debate” was about was how horrible the Swedish health care system is. There was no advocates for an alternative viewpoint, not anyone there saying it was NOT the worst thing in the world to match their hyperbole to how horrible it would be if America had a similar universal health care system. There was no expert about the system they were trashing, no Swedes, no Swedish Americans, no health care or governmental experts, and nothing to suggest any one of the “panelists” had studied the question in depth at all.

       And yet this kind of slamming, non-stop hysteria is always aimed even greater at anything which could put an end to it or shine any light onto any debate making them real and substanative and making them show, gulp, alternative viewpoints. Ending this kind of monopoly on the airwaves. These kinds of controlling of the debates on what is and is not even debatable. That was the repeal of the Fairness in Media doctrine that required merely an attempt at fairness.

       If you are going to trash something, especially using techniques commonly used in brainwashing, require someone there to say something different, really different, like say opposed or opposite. And have it come from as reputable a person as possible, not some hack you can shoot the message by making fun of the messenger.

       The questionable opposed unquestionably pliable Democratic Party has taken anything similar to the restoring the Fairness in Media Doctrine (a guideline nonetheless!) as off the table as impeachment, ending the war, or anything else that might piss off their corporate benefactors or masters.

       Though they no doubt would be allowed to have mentioned it, something in Sweden would strike far more fear into these people who have gone so far as to say that corporations have the RIGHT to MISINFORM the public if they so choose to with DISINFORMATION (not even the government which by default if you buy that line of reasoning would be a no-brainer) if they so choose because it is their money paying for the airtime and the salaries of the “newscasters” or “presenters,” if you will. Actors, more accurately.

       What they would not even wish to have debated, not that they have not shut down anyone from bringing back any attempt at fairness in the media, and demagoging watchdog groups like MediaMatters.org, is complete editorial freedom of news divisions from their corporations absolutely and without limit. They have this in Sweden and other countries. Public Broadcasting News channels funded by the state, or by companies in exchange for the right to use the airwaves.

       Without access to public airwaves, the corporations which sell advertising on them would not exist. They would not be able to use the kickbacks to politicians to get them better coverage, give them campaign donations funded back to themselves in advertising, and in even greater whoring of the politicians they fund most once they are voted into office, which is practically inevitable. But could politicians dare to even suggest they might cut off the only thing that guarantees them a 90% likelihood at keeping their jobs for life, or for as long as they would want them?

       Don’t let a few scandals fool you, their jobs, almost all of them, cannot be challenged and may as well run unopposed. Both parties have defined their turf states like criminal organizations mark their territories and merely fight over the bordering scraps where they sense a weakness on the part of the other.

       The real game is keeping safe the lifeline to both, and keeping these two free from outside “infections” of ideas which would change the status quo of either, or then, eventually both. Keeping in both parties, keeping the elected ones they select in “safe” states to be walking into office again and again no matter what they do or how often they sell out the average person, that is the overall goal of both parties and they pair off amongst each other which party will take the heat for which unpopular policy like trading baseball players.

       Allowing real challenges to this mindset and control of primary elections, of TV debates, of brainwashing which you cannot even call brainwashing because the news networks are redefining ALL words now, not just “torture” or “democracy” to mean whatever they want them to mean. Speaking out against this, however ineptly, however slowly, hesitantly, unclearly or slurred, is the real pornography, the real thing that will get your ass canned at any “liberal” news network, get your website blocked, get your voices silenced.

       But the greatest weapon against it, is simply to expose it. Now, later, constantly, without respite. Any letup to keeping control of the media will never happen, and “free” real and legitimate debates will come about only at a large price; a public willing to make sacrifices to demand it of their government, for it to regulate its media, instead of the media’s parent corporations regulating them. Its not about ideology, its about obtrusification, and about a public unable to tell the difference, or even define either one. Most have surrendered the debate, surrendered their minds, surrendered their culture to the media, freedom and your rights was all that you left to lose. Did you think without the others they could last?

Open House at US Torture Sites, If We Do It, It Is Not Torture Giuliani

       When I was in Eastern Europe, in the former Soviet Union, one of the “attractions” for tourists, no doubt for “educational” purposes was where they tortured people, and most likely killed people too, sometimes after torturing them, sometimes during. My sense of sensibility told me to stay away from these places, for good reason.

       One place I did get near to was a rock where not a few people were tortured and killed but many people ceremoniously over many many more years than the Soviet Union existed, and long before the Russians came to town centuries earlier. I did not even need to see the plaque to know what went on there, there was a darkness to that rock, a palpable chill when I got closer to it and knew better than to get too close.

       Like many of such “sacred” places, that was where the first churches were set up. Christianity has a dark side much deeper than the Spanish Inquisition. It goes back nearly as far as the religion itself, and it was integral to how it spread itself to be a “world religion”. To be relateable to the local Europeans, Christianity adapted itself not only to the locations where humans were sacrificed and tortured, but adopted the same language as well. A “powerful God” “sacrificed” and allowed the “torture” of his “only Son” for YOU and to give you your life, and you owe him your respect and allegiance, and if you do fail to do so and obey the rules he has stated that you must follow, he will TORTURE YOU, and not just for a little while as he did allowed when he gave up his Son for you, but F O R E V E R ! ! ! Are we not being clear here? Want us to act it out a bit then? You know we will.

       Not to put all of this onto those “barbarian pagan Europeans”. Because long before Jesus, the same faith that Jesus followed, the “True” faith before him in which he was raised (and mostly rejected and was punished as a heretic for dissing, Fundamentalist Christians really can’t grasp that part), a forerunner founder within this faith of the one “true God” who showed his proclivity for human sacrifices by asking one of his most devoted followers to kill one of his sons in tribute to Him. The lessons in this being that He showed His magnanimity by letting Abraham off the hook at the last second, and that the whole thing was to be a reminder, not just to Abraham but to all, never to love anything or anyone more than Him. Or you get the point of what He may demand you to do if you happen to forget that little lesson.

       I do not mean to dwell on the dark pasts of these religions, but for many many people this is not the past at all, this is still how they frame and interpret the world around them. Torture, human sacrifice, they are inseparable from these faiths. They, inadvertently or not, teach them. They may say they are bad, but that even God does it, or allows it, under “certain circumstances.”

       My first “taught” exposure to torture as a child, the earliest Gold Standard of torture, besides the Crucifixion, was the whipping of Jesus, acted out in glorious Technicolor, to enlighten three and four year olds (as far back as I can remember) like me of the world I now inhabited. It was not long before that standard was surpassed for me by my own government, but the earliest impressions still remain.

       But it is not the past that concerns me. The future is all that I think of because within that, the future, the past is given whatever value it might have, could have, but only when it is looked at honestly. I have gone on more than a few times about how Revelations has NOTHING to do with Jesus, not what he said, not what he taught, and it was added onto what was otherwise an attempted “Buddhist-like” spin on a Middle Eastern religion. It was added later, it was antithetical to the whole point of Christianity, and it was done to terrorize people as much if not more, than to “enlighten” them. And that “addition” to the New Testament has led to genocides in the past, and if not corrected, will lead to more, long after the current one contemplated, if that one doesn’t eliminate the possibility for more by eliminating humanity itself.

       But these, and these are by no means minor, these are not the only dark centers within Christianity, or that mutation that some sects call Christianity which would no doubt shock even Martin Luther, not to belittle the corruption and decadence that he bore witness to.

       I came across a paper blowing in the wind of a “song” to be sung at a Christian revival meeting. The gist of it went, “Enter me Jesus, take me over Jesus, there is nothing in me but you, Jesus.”

       If I were an atheist, that probably would not bother me. If I was a pure Buddhist, I might think that a bit messed up, but relatively harmless, though a bit dark and dangerous. Knowing as much as I do about many faiths, for those wanting to be taken over so completely by a spirit, in essence, a name, giving up completely their sense of a self, without any reservation or means to compass what is a Jesus (oh, I know, they would know if it was something else) from a Satan (not to say either do or do not exist, but I am pretty sure those opening themselves up to be “taken completely over” by “Jesus” are sure as heck the kind of people who would believe in a “Satan” as well).

       To know how the Christian faith has evolved (another word Fundamentalists hate) over the centuries, to think that this kind of darkness, this kind of “positive” possession, is the end result for millions of “the Faith,” this is almost unbearable. For those who truly have loved Christianity, have seen it grow, it is as heartbreaking it is for Americans to see the United States becoming the world’s largest promoter of torture, of torture without charges or trials, of potentially lifelong detentions, and of a leader who is not only above the law, any law except what he chooses to recognize, but also can be a judge, juror, and executioner for every other living person on the planet. They are the same kinds of heartbreak, the same sort of endless disappointment.

       As much as Christianity has called any other type of faith, heathens, pagans, devil worshippers, they have through the diversity and growth over the centuries, become such a wide brush, it in many aspects has become in many measures and from many angles, infected with the worst of what they accuse others of. Knowing this, seeing this, ACKNOWLEDGING THIS, is the only path to rid itself of this, the only means of redemption possible.

       And for America, this too is the only path of true redemption. When is America going to give guided tours of its (hopefully soon to be “former”) torture chambers in Eastern Europe, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere as Russia and its ex-client states torturer’s apprentices have done? Are we even on track for such a truth awakening? Do we even conceive it to be possible anymore?

       In the very same countries where the Soviet Union tortured people, we have set up shop, though doubtlessly “renovated” and “technologically improved.” Is there a single credible candidate for Congress or the Presidency that would say we ought to educate our public of the torturing done in their name, done supposedly for their benefits, so they might have a REASON to ask that we stop this decent into inhumanity, or will they all continue the farce of denial, acquiescing that what people don’t know won’t hurt them (but will kill many others)?

       For the first time we are about to approve an attorney general who, in advance, unlike Gonzales, says torture is allowable and that the President is sometimes above the law. While claiming to be above saying torture is good, and while most probably believing it personally himself to be negative, he has stated that he does not believe “water-boarding” has necessarily been determined to be torture.

       If not this, water-boarding, something the equivalent of induced suffocation sometimes accidentally ending in death, then how many other “classified” secret methods of our “alternative interrogation techniques” would he consider not torture at all? Would he even demand that these definitions be made public so that a “democracy” founded upon the “consent of the governed” might allow those supposedly giving their consent to even be allowed to know what our leadership considers to be torture and not to be torture, to be allowed to voice an informed opinion on it at all? No, he maintains all of such methods and matters, regardless of US and international laws to the contrary are the up to the judgement and discretion of the President who nominated him for that position.

       This President, regardless of what the Constitution says to the contrary is, by his definition, above the law completely just so long as he says “national security” before killing and torturing and invading, and says the same before classifying any and all evidence needed to make a judgement upon those decisions, or any others he may make, and laws he may have broken.

       While I wish to refrain from the relative insanity being thrown about as “speech” in the Presidential campaign, one remark has made it impossible for me to remain silent. Our definition of what is torture and isn't, (and from the “major candidates” for the US Presidency, many of which qualify as committing international crimes of threatening to bomb and attack countries), to Rudy Guiliani, the definition of torture is quite simple in the world he wishes to lead us into. If we do it, it is not torture. Whether or not something is torture now depends not upon the act, not upon the technique or method, but upon which person or group who is doing it. As psychotic as that “reasoning” is, he does earn the Gold Star for Honesty.

       The most deranged thing is, that such statements, which would not be tolerated by our Press if any other candidate or world leader attempted to put forth such, “if we do it, it is not torture, if you do it, it is,” but that they sell this to the American public as a “qualification” to “lead”. And the public, enough quite possibly to get such a madman, or a person who chooses to imitate one for the purpose of “leading” a country to openly embrace torture, endless wars, and countless types of double-think reasoning, applauds it wildly. “Keep us safe, Rudy” even if, or because, your ideas would likely be the death of us all, at least “you calls it as you seize it.” :-)

       Torture is in fact, though many Americans may not know it, an American institution. Not one that ever got much press mind you, but like slavery, and because of it, something we excelled at. We had, during a Golden Age of Enlightenment of the 19th century, many human non-persons to experiment upon, refine torture techniques, to attempt to break people psychologically, physically, and completely, as one might “break” a horse.

       A good book upon modern slavery (Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy by Kevin Bales) had pictures of some of these devices, invented by Americans and patented no less, for the purpose of torturing human beings. But that was then, you may say, we are so much better than that now. I know better than to lash out wildly, if and this mind you is quite restrained considering the travesties, and dare I say the inhumanly evil hypocrisies which allow these unspeakable horrors to remain safely hidden below the radar so they can grow and thrive and become our environment, so I will just conclude with this.

       When our devoted leaders say water-boarding and other techniques do not lead to permanent brain damage (untrue) or lasting irreparable trauma (definitely not true), how is it they have the data to back up such statements, even if they are lies? Because while these “interrogations” are going on, mostly with those often believe to be completely innocent, many under the age of 18 and by definition of all countries children, they are studied, measured, refined.

       I most likely will never write what I termed “Doctors on the Darkside” but it had to do with the fact that the only thing that slowed this from spreading out of control before Cheney/Bush was that it was socially unacceptable, and that is by far the greatest atrocity being done now in plain sight, worst than even our crimes of aggression. “What did you do today at work Daddy?” “Well honey, we put electrodes on peoples ----------s, and measured how much time it took while we tortured them for them to pass out from the agony. We did it for hours, then measured the right number of hours in-between to find the right intervals to drive them completely insane quicker than those we tested yesterday. And tomorrow we will try out a new technique of torture that I devised all by myself!” Wife- “Dear, to I smell a raise?” “No, that’s just the smell of burnt human flesh again, I can’t seem to wash it out of my clothes.” “Well, then we’ll just have to find the right detergent. We’re so proud of you.”

       I am not saying America is alone in this type of “research” and development. I am saying, though we have sold the “fruits” of our testing to other countries in the past, and now study our pupils now outpacing us due to their greater availability of test subjects than we have to work with, we have pushed it more publicly than any other to be accepted. The “We don’t torture” BS doesn’t cut it anymore when we boast of it at the same time. We are using torture worldwide in an attempt to intimidate countries from dissenting to the leaders we approve of for them, and now even to scare our own people from dissenting at home.

       It has seeped into our culture so much, we no longer by and large even see that it is there. While in Sweden, in legal citizen limbo, I watched a TV show by and large aimed at children, an “educational” show about dangerous animals. In it was a scene about using what is learned from animals to subdue people and a scene was shown of demonstrators holding signs being tear-gassed while the narrator joked and mocked them in a comical voice. This was so much nicer, we are meant to think, at breaking up marches (a democratic form of supposedly legal dissent and protest) than just shooting them all instead. (Message to kids: Protesters with signs, bad, gassing them good, and funny too!) The credits at the end stated the footage of the protest being “broken up” was provided by the US Army and looked to be a Central or South American country.

       I also remember around that time reading of a person who was “questioned” in Afghanistan in the presence of a CIA “observer” who, the interviewee, was hung in mid-air by his arms tied behind his backs for days and on occasion beaten until he finally died from the pain as his arms separated from their sockets. The kicker is that the CIA observer noted that he was most likely completely innocent. All without so much as being charged with a crime, never mind convicted of one. Compare that to Jesus, who by all measures, perhaps inadvertently or on purpose, inspired people to revolt and was given at least a trial before being tortured to death. This person by admission was mostly likely innocent, not with evidence to be charged, and still no crime was committed in torturing him to death since it was the "good guys" dishing it out. "Rudy would do it" as the bumper sticker saying goes. Many people were turned over to them simple to get the reward money, or as a good way to say goodbye forever to someone you did not like or owed money to.

       But according to Rudy's logic, if we had done that, it might not had been torture.

       I am not pointing fingers at anyone. It is a dangerous world we live it. Torture being done, scientists perfecting it. People have been promoting it here on TV or making it palatable to the general public and are getting multi-million dollar salaries in return. But others have silently, and some no so silently, rebelled against this. It is in them and in their lives the hope of any bright future is to be found. Some when asked to torture, to murder unjustly, to go on TV and say how it is debatably reasonable to do such things to people who quite possibly are completely innocent to “possibly” “save” others, namely yourselves from some threat, real or imagined, they quit.

       Others, they do something else. If they are not brave or secure enough to quit, they do what they are asked, but they do it badly. They, though purposeful ineptitude, choose to leave behind a record for the day when a new leadership is in charge who would wish to right the wrongs (or at least recognize them) of the past. It is apparent to all the world now and to themselves, the Democrats in America are no such people. They, in the equivalent of terms of the USSR, would shoot those who would come forward just as much as the previous dictatorship would, they would build towering structures over the mass unmarked graves, and they would bury the past crimes completely and forever.

       Where others saw the “most incompetent administration ever,” I saw a group of people seeing the atrocities going on all around them and did the best they could to try to walk the middle ground, those who did not quit outright and those unlike those without consciences, they did what they were asked as badly as believably possible, but so far, to no avail.

       It probably does not matter if Rudy “if we do it, it is not torture” Giuliani becomes the next President, or Hillary Clinton, or Dick Cheney. The mantra is the same. The bodies will stay buried. Torture will become more mainstream. Trials, when allowed at all will become more farcical to the greater ratings and laugh tracks of the Daily Show and Colbert Report. Those who did the unconscionable will watch their superiors who ordered it all go not only unpunished, but becoming more wealthy and respected than ever because of it all, and they will only have what remains of their own consciences to be propped up by the fact that they, at least, did not do it well, and that if anyone of power ever had cared worth damn, it all could have been exposed and stopped.

Note: The previous post, Rise of the Peacemakers, was written the day my Mom died. I had only posted the Molly Hatchett quote before I got the news, and did not have time to proof-read the rest before putting it off for awhile. I was going to put it up later the same day (now about 10 days ago) but was in no real rush. Today I put up the full post below of the Rise of the Peacemakers the way it was written that morning.

The Rise of the Peacemakers (Finally fully posted, written 10/15)

A wise man told me there's something you should know
the way you judge a man is you look into his soul
and you'll soon see everything. ...

If ashes are ashes and dust is dust
at our journey's end, then we return we must
to the sands of the shore
White doves in flight, peace to all
but tell me why the peacemakers fall
Must we bury anymore?

A hush stilled the crowd as the horse rode by,
black lace veil hid the tears from her eyes
and we all wept in silence
How many times must good men die?
How many times will the children cry?
'till they suffer no more sadness
Oh, stop the madness
Oh, stop all the madness.

Fall of the Peacemakers Lyrics, Molly Hatchet

Alfred Nobel wrote in his will that the Peace Prize should be awarded to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

Gore's Peace Prize, By Jan Oberg 10/12/07

       My first instinct upon hearing Albert Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 2007, was to write pummeling him both from the Left and Right of the American political spectrum, but now I see that was many peoples reactions from different opposing ideologies as well. Since many have said such things numerously already, and eloquently, there is little point in rehashing or restarting it here.

       It bothered me so much personally to have such a negative reaction because I for many years aspired to become a peacemaker. (Their leather costumes are cool, and they have guns that shoot “little yellow balls of light”-John Crichton. (OK, to look up that quote, I found out it is actually the “Peacekeepers” not “Peacemakers” who have the cool costumes but that is nothing that a good costume designer like Bob Mackie couldn't fix.)) By any objective look at the aim and purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize, Albert Gore not only comes up far far short, but nearly anyone, if looking at the past or present alone, should be scratching their heads thinking, WTF?

       At a time when the United States is not only engaged in multiple wars at once, having become the aggressor nation in one or both, and all “serious” candidates to become the “New Decider” promising to, or not ruling out starting new “pre-emptive” wars, where does “Citizen Gore's” environmental crusade rate as anything meaningful on a scale of world peace? Is this a “Pre-emptive” Peace Prize in an age of the US declaring itself free to launch unlimited and unfettered by International Law, “Pre-emptive” wars?

       Is this a bunch of Scandinavians attempts to “interfere” with our sacrosanct, and unquestionably honest, and 100% free from corruption or foreign influence, process of cherry-picking our next president? That may seem far fetched to some, that any foreign governments or NGOs outside of Israel (not that they try to do that, or, in a Seinfeldian quote, “Not that there's anything wrong with that...”) would wish to tip one way or another who gets selected to run for the President of the United States. But what else other than a wish to interfere in our pure and wholly uncorrupted decision making process for our highest office could make a “Citizen Gore” and not a “Candidate Gore” worthy of a “Peace” prize? Nothing as far as I can tell.

       To buy into the official explanation, that the world's environmental crisis looming will trigger wars and further endanger the peace, ...someday, is this greater than a present time when larger numbers in the United States (not to mean to keep bringing this up, but it is where Gore is from) in the mainstream press, the clergy, and the would-be elected officials themselves talk about World War III (or IV) as an almost inevitability which is not only desirable, but good for the economy, and good for world peace as well? In an Orwellian sense, in the US at least, War Is Peace has become an accepted fact of the Beltway “conventional wisdom,” which claiming so on TV will get you s---loads of money if you can stomach it later.

       But yes, giving someone actually working for peace against this mentality, it would be too little to late. We must look to the “future,” should there be one, and “Citizen Gore” is full of it, the future that is. He is setting our sights beyond “Oil Wars” to “Water Wars” and more. Fair enough, but what is he doing to prevent them? What has he done to prevent them if he is all retired now from being exhausted by having done something before to prevent them?

       Yes, like Paul Revere, he has sounded the alarm. We should be reducing our carbon emissions, using biodegradable packaging, separating our trash, etc. One million Iraqis dead since the newest war of choice, new Berlin Walls going up in Iraq and Palestine, war related famine and disease, but hey, even “Citizen Gore” said, that might be a bad thing too. He even sort of said a new eminently preventable War in Iran would be a bummer too, unlike his fellow mainstream Democrats, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards.

       Am I mocking our Holy Gore? Am I deriding someone who has dedicated his life to the service and betterment of others and his country? Am I suggesting he commit himself to the humiliation of running for President in a country whose press has pounced upon and tried to ruin the life of a 12 year old boy for having suggested that other kids deserve to get life saving transplants like he got even if they can't afford it, that same press that also would not stop tearing Saint Al to pieces the moment he announced he would run, not that they are not doing so now, just in case he should forget his place?

       Certainly not, or not on purpose anyway. Decisions like that are up to the Decider. I know that whatever his motivations, the environment is the big issue, probably the biggest issue which will define the even bigger issues of the economy and of wars, and how they interrelate. For now the worlds economies are based around war as the solution for environmental problems, and those wars will further destroy the environment, if not completely destroy it. It would make far more sense to give an environmental prize to a peacemaker than it would to give a peace prize to an environmentalist. “Citizen Gore” is no peacemaker. Whether “Candidate Gore” is more than just a hope of meddlesome Nobel selection committees, and much else of the world outside the United States, that is in the hands of the other Decider, or the Great Decider (or the Great Pretender (“Who started out so young and strong, only to surrender”-Jackson Browne).

       This is a difficult time for me personally. I was abruptly awakened from a deep worried sleep by a phone call, only to find my mind was stuck on a phrase I wrote many years ago. Its strange to find that your mind is still working when you are that tired and out of it. Stranger for me to think it is going over things as seemingly as unimportant as words. Now, on a more personal level, words are less important, but what they trigger, or fail to, or fail to prevent, they are never unimportant. The conceptual and the actual are intertwined, always.

       The phrase was “our nature of cherishing borders.” It is to me key to many things. The dividing lines between us and them in ones own country and between other countries are always the flashpoints, they are as conceptual as the walls which make us feel free to make fun of and see the person next to us as “the other”. And they are lines in the sand, and lines on maps. The "border" it was about though, is the border between life and death, the dividing line my mother is crossing now. All that that has dredged up positively and negatively, images, memories, and moments in time, and I discover when getting a call in the middle of the night with news, my dreaming is about... words. The full stanza I had to look up and finally decided to write this post out. I put that one and the one after it below.

       The past is a mask
       hiding the face of the present
       as it tumultuously shakes all present order
       leaving us to gape
       and assign values to its fury
       attesting to our nature of cherishing borders

       What is is the facade
       of forces which enable it to be
       and this effrontery of seeming irrefutability
       lacks the definition of tangency
       and the perspective of eventual ends
       stripping all our understandings of credulity

Bike Me: Fat-Bottomed Girls You Make the Rockin' World Go Round

Captain o captain
So it all has come true
There’s an island in the sun
Come together everyone
Ahead lies an island ...

There they were...the islands. big ones, small ones, beautiful ones
and wasted ones . . . but wherever they went, wherever they looked,
wherever they put their feet... only uninhabitable, exploited, devastated sands. . .
they encountered everything they meant to leave behind.
War... poison... degeneration . . . love died a long time ago . . .

Dan Mccafferty "Island In The Sun" lyrics

HIP HIP (Just kidding)

He sighed, fell silent again, then continued in a brisker tone, "Well, duty's duty. One can't consult one's own preference. I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. ... That was when science first began to be controlled–after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too."
"But you didn't go to an island," said the Savage, breaking a long silence.
The Controller smiled. "That's how I paid. By choosing to serve happiness. Other people's–not mine. It's lucky," he added, after a pause, "that there are such a lot of islands in the world. I don't know what we should do without them. Put you all in the lethal chamber, I suppose."

Aldous Huxley "Brave New World", Chapter 16

Note: This post popped into my head when working on the Monsters Post. Nice to finally have come full circle with that thought. Coming up on one year now stranded on an island again having not much more constructive things to do except ride my bike and write, so it is nice when I can combine the two. "Put down that pen and hold onto the steering once in a while!"

Bicycle races are coming your way
so forget all your duties, oh yeah!
Fat-bottomed girls they'll be riding today
so look out for those beauties oh yeah
On your marks... get set.... GO!

As I said in the introduction to the notes, I could not afford time-wise to work on the project as the concepts took too much time and most of my awareness to sort through. I was in Europe, about to go to school and trying to figure out how to pay for it and be able to stay there long enough to graduate, so little notes and drawings on concepts about 4D space were all I could afford time-wise. At this point the 5D Notes really were living up to their future name, later ascribed looking back when compiling them. This was Part 1 of the notes while in Lithuania (2003) hanging out, bike riding, learning on my own about the region I was to study, and getting ready for my studies, more or less.

2D 3D 4D 5D Thinking Made Simple - Books One and Two Indexed

I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike

Balance quote in regards to objects existing as folded space oscillating omni-directionally
Note: The balance quote referred to was written around the start of the revision of Deconstructing the Universe, coming just after the passage quoted in the 2005 update of Deconstructing the Universe. Not really profoundly original but came from thinking about balance while riding my bike (without holding on to anything as usual). It was not as balanced as it had been (flipped it over again) and I suddenly needed to constantly be shifting my weight to keep it going straight (or actually try holding on to the steering, not likely). New bike now :-). The balance quote (2003) was, "Balance may be inherent within all things in nature but in the course of interaction, balance between things over time is impossible. What appears as balance is merely imbalance used to counter inbalance. This may give the illusion of balance and stability but it requires constant work and attention and only appears (as) static and at rest. It must sway back and forth to keep its central point in focus. To stop this completely, to attempt to stand on the razor's edge, would be to topple over".

The 5D Notes Part 2 (2004)

I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like

I was one of the many millions around the world who watched the storming of the TV tower on live TV. Later, living in Vilnius (Lithuania), I had lots of chances to reflect on that night. The TV tower was visible from my apartment windows and balcony, and I would see it every day. I rode my bike past it most of the times I rode my bike, and to me it is a symbol of the struggle for freedom, sacred ground if you will, like Tienanmen Square, Auschwitz, Wounded Knee, and a lot of other places people should never forget, nor forget what they represent which we will always need remember constantly if we wish to improve upon them or ourselves. ...

The Attack on the TV Tower in Vilnius, 1/13/1991 (written in 2004)

You say Rolls I say Royce
You say God give me a choice

... so I can hope I did my best even if it amounts to nothing. At a recent protest here with Palestinians on a hunger strike, it was suggested by one person's opinion, "you know, no matter what they say about promising you secrecy, they turn over everything you say to the CIA." "I know", was all I answered. That that was what I was counting on and the whole point, I wanted to add. I said as much in RCP2, and much since then has just been having to wait and see where things settle and where the new level is to be found. Nothing I can do but go where I am told and do what is asked and see where it leads to, if anywhere. It has been work, and it has been fun. I really did like riding my bike a lot and miss that. Either my little adventure of the last few years is winding down or just getting started. That is up to others to decide what I am worth and if I will be given something worthwhile to do for a country I feel inclined to work to help.

Letter to family, early 2006

You say Lord I say Christ

On Christmas day (2006) I was riding my bike on Maui and I saw a sign of just 4 words, “Dry Area Prevent Fires”. The first two words or first half was quite clear, a declarative statement, "this area is dry". The second half was more instructional, seemingly suggesting I should prevent fires there. Seeing as it was a very brief sign, it pretty much left it up to me how to proceed in following that instruction, command, or suggestion. ... That is really all one can do in that situation. No one, not me, not Smokey the Bear, not Jesus, not the President of the United States, no one can prevent forest fires. They will happen, like wars, plagues, and terrorist attacks, and nothing anyone can do will prevent them. The best we can do or ask anyone to do is to not do anything stupid to cause them, not to throw matches on dangerous areas, not to forget to put out camp fires, not to drop bombs on tinderboxes.

Smokey the Burning Bush to George: Only you can prevent terrorist attacks or forest fires (2006)

I don't believe in Peter Pan
Frankenstein or Superman

The logistics and timing of it depended on several factors. I wanted to write it on the same mountain where it began, Haleakala, which raised problems. One, is I needed a full day to travel up the mountain. Two, unless I used a paper notebook, I needed a notebook computer with a good enough battery to last for several hours to write it all at once. Third, I needed good brakes on my bike, my only transportation at the moment. With my cars, when I had cars, putting them in neutral, they would still speed up to about 70 mph just by rolling. ... It took about 6 months for all those 3 factors to line up all at the same time. Even with fairly decent brakes, I still ended up going about 40 mph or more with the brakes almost fully on! On the way down I paraphrased one of my favorite lines from my notes pages to sum up the idea of braking."The goal ought not to be to stop, for that is impossible. Therefore the goal ought to be to slow down enough so that, if need should arise to stop, death is not a certainty."

Not down and out yet, and the perils of mile high blogging (2007)

I don't wanna be a candidate
For Vietnam or Watergate

As I have written before here recently, words are an important measure to me as far as what we choose to think to say, but equally by what we choose not to say, what words we omit. Which words are the most important to us. While riding my bike in 2003, during the 'debate' in the run-up to the Iraq War, a local school here on Maui had large inspirational banners of single words for the children of values. COURAGE, STRENGTH, HONOR, etc. stood towering in giant-sized capital letters over the play area on banners painted by the students announcing to the world what the students or the school thought were the most important words. I saw instead what was missing. By omission, the banners I read were NO COMPASSION, NO FORGIVENESS, NO MERCY, and most glaringly absent of all, certainly NO PEACE!

No Mercy: The Cheney Bush War Generation Graduates (2007)

'Cos all I want to do is....

Bicycle bicycle bicycle!

(In Red colored font...) Freddie Mercury (Queen) "Bicycle Race" Lyrics