I am reprinting Mathew Koehler’s comment from 4&20, and he is quoting his friend Jeff Gibbs – co-producer and composer for “Bowling for Columbine,” who had this to say about the most recent school shooting tragedy…”the 18th (!!) since Columbine”:

“A world full of guns and empty of mental health care is, well, the hell we are living in. Violence is down? HAHAHA! Almost a thousand times more American’s kill each other with guns than in other “civilized” nations. Time to grow up and stand up to the egoistic gun nuts. No one wants your guns, you’re not that important. It’s just that the rest of us don’t want to live in a world in which blow-hard egoists carry guns to the mall, schools and sporting events. You stand almost zero chance of using that gun to stop violence. Far greater is the chance someone will use your gun to do terrible things in your own family. We don’t want to live in a world in which your children take your guns and commit suicide, kill a family member, or massacre people which is exactly what happened yesterday and at Columbine. If you enjoy the gun toting lifestyle, move to Somalia, Juarez or join the Taliban. Or rent an island to play-pretend you live in the wild wild west with your buddies while the adults come up with some sensible laws here in what’s left of America.”

There is no horror that compares to loss of a child. The shock is settling in and grieving right now is intense. There will be a genuine outpouring of love and support from family, friends and even strangers. People get back to their lives, and then comes the slow and only partial recovery. “The hours,” those times alone, in the early morning hours, force reflection and acceptance, and out of that can come strength. But there will be no forgetting. For a parent, the loss of a child is a wound that can only be compartmentalized as life moves forward. It will never heal.

Iraqi, Afghani, Serbian, Libyan, Panamanian, Vietnamese parents feel no less pain. They surely look on the actions of the American killing machine as being as senseless as those of Adam Lanza. They grope for explanation, try to make sense of it all.

Back in late 1989, only coincidental to the departure from office of George H.W. Bush, the United States struck Panama. Since “communism” was a flagging enterprise, the cover story was drug interdiction. During that attack an ordnance of some kind was released on a barrio in Panama City, and by their accounting, as many as 2,000 people were killed, after which ensued bulldozers and a mass grave.

We’ll never know, of course, as we were not the victims, and so there was no investigation. Interesting, however: there was no apparent tactical purpose for use of the bomb, which has led to speculation that the U.S. was merely experimenting with a new device of some sort, perhaps delivered by a then-new stealth bomber. If that is the case, it would have to be an anti-personnel weapon, and “personnel” would have to be people living in close quarters, or civilians. Military leaders are too smart to house soldiers in high concentrations in a few buildings, 1983 in Lebanon aside..

Since our own lives have beginnings, middles and ends, there is a tendency to attach far too much historical significance on events of our times. Americans have a maudlin sense of victimhood about 9/11, not even knowing it was self-inflicted. In the larger picture it is the events that followed, the attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Now Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran (these are the military operations we know about*) that might warrant a paragraph in a history book.
Continue reading “Sanity and survival” →

I told my wife that we should see Les Miserables before the Oscars, as it will probably be the “best picture.” It has everything – a musical, a book few have read, and big stars – it is only missing a British-speaking cast member to punch it through.

I had not thought it through – “Zero Dark Thirty” is a shoo-in. I see where this thing called “Rotten Tomatoes”, which I assume is just a bunch of critics, like it at 100%.

It is about the killing of Osama bin Laden. Right away I thought a movie about a ten-year manhunt to find and kill a guy who has been dead for over ten years ought to be called “Mission Impossible.”

Now that I think about it, that movie and Argo will surely be nominated, as both have big-name actors, both are based on recent American lies, and ZDT will win. After all, this is America. We are first patriotic, and only secondly stupid, and each movie has great appeal in both areas.

Les Miserables? Bad timing, that’s all. Anyway, if 100% of our critics liked ZDT, it is safe to say that our critics are as stupid as our public.
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Oh, alright alright – in answer to the complaint that I am snide and condescending, please understand that there are many ways to approach a subject like 9/11 and the supposed killing of Osama – presentation of evidence and good manners, appeal to logic and such things. No approach works. So I just lay it out there. 9/11 and OBL and all of that are easily undone by evidence, or in the case of his killing, the lack of it. But people cling to the official stories anyway, and refuse to look at evidence, meaning that we are dealing with religious belief.

In that situation, 9/11 is no longer a real event, and Osama is not a person. We are dealing with metaphors and icons. There is a level at which religious belief transcends metaphor, and if smart people choose to indulge in such belief and ritual with the knowledge that it is the deeper meaning that matters, then I have no problem. 9/11 becomes a symbol for the United States and justification for aggression. We can have informed debate on that level. But if you, the reader, insist on clinging to the official word of authority figures on these issues, then I suggest that you are … words, words – what words to use … less than informed. Being uninformed is not a problem, as we are all such on many, many topics. But insisting on staying that way is … words words … reveling in ignorance.

The questions often presented as I prattle on about painfully obvious domestic crimes like 9/11 and the JFK assassination are … 1) How can so many people work together without being found out, and 2) How do they manage to keep secrets?

It doesn’t take many people, only key people, and even key people need not know the purpose of their activities. Lee Harvey Oswald said after his arrest something like “Now everyone will know me,” by which he meant that his cover was blown. He was working for the CIA and FBI at once, and had no clue that he was being set up to be a patsy. At every level of a crime like that or 9/11, people are carrying our their duties, oblivious to the bigger picture. Oswald was but one of many tools, one whose name we happen to know.

Once they find out, why don’t they speak up? For one, they are dealing with cold-blooded murderers, and would like to stay alive. And even beyond that, their jobs, careers and pensions are at stake. So why don’t they speak out after retirement? Again, pensions … but beyond that, what about death bed confessions?
Continue reading “If you like sausage …” →

Regarding Syria, there is concern that the Assad regime, which is “evil,” might have chemical weapons, and that there might need to be a military attack to save lives.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. (H. L. Mencken)

My money says that the old WMD gambit works yet again. The US, the greatest terrorist force on the planet, operates as it does because its own population is in a state of perpetual fear and ignorance. I was born in 1950, and so came aboard during the second great Red Scare. This was peacetime propaganda. Joe McCarthy, fallout shelters, duck and cover, air raid drills – all of it was designed to create a climate of fear. I remember my family and neighbors out front of our house looking for Sputnik, the satellite put in space by the evil Soviets. A neighbor a block away built a bomb shelter and stocked it with food and weapons.

Humans naturally follow and trust authority figures. We are not designed as thinking machines. Back in the 1950’s there was not much information around – there was news filtered through Cronkite and Huntley/Brinkley on TV and some radio agitators, but not pervasive. So in our defense it can be said of my generation and my parents that we were kept in the dark in part by lack of technology to access the outside world.

But you guys out there now with your computers and Internet – there is no excuse for you not seeing what is happening. None. Really. The ease with which you are manipulated is inexcusable.

The posts below (“My work here is done” and “Technology as our best friend and deadly enemy“) highlighted to me the utter and complete bankruptcy of our political system. If we hired the greatest criminal minds of all time and asked them to design a more corrupt system, they could not do better than this.

Take an ordinary man with no scruples, like Max Baucus, and put him in a position of power. Give him access to women and money, power and prestige, and give him enough attention to satisfy his narcissistic needs. Make sure that it is all legal, so that he does not end up in prison, where his type belongs, or on a used car lot.

Seed him now and then with a little money, and he is your bitch, a male concubine. The pittance, the small amount of money it takes to keep a man like him in power is dwarfed by the massive rewards for the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies who sponsor him. He is an investment that yields returns in a percentage range too high for the human mind to embrace. ACA alone yields billions of dollars in new revenue for a paltry few million it takes to keep this man in office.

I find Baucus to be particularly distasteful, and have similar feelings about Jon Tester and Michael Bennet, since I am a former resident of Montana and currently of of Colorado. These are the worst of the worst, and they rise to power not due to intelligence or integrity, but rather because of a low price tag.

We cannot fix this system, as the corruption is so deep now that it cannot be removed without killing the patient. Every office holder is bribed in some fashion, and has some skeletons that keep him/her in line. They are beyond the reach of the voter, and if replaced, by definition it is another of their ilk to occupy that slot.

We’re bankrupt now.