zen hell

2012-01-07T19:28:00.000-08:00

Drones

The other night I spoke with an 18-year-old University of California student and was shocked to learn that she didn't know what a drone was. An A student having just finished her first semester in college, she certainly had not stayed up on the news. What upset me wasn't that she didn't know about drones, but that her not knowing is indicative of MILLIONS of young American adults not knowing.

She didn't know that our government is deploying drones in several countries, that a third of the people killed by drones are innocent bystanders, that Obama has ordered more drone strikes than Bush ever dreamed of, or that the drones are operated by normal suburban military personnel who work in comfortable command-and-control rooms at a military base outside Las Vegas, killing people 8,000 miles away, then flying their drones back around to see clear video of the carnage they have just wreaked, including little kids missing legs or heads, a bride and groom accidentally blown away, a grandmother face down in a pool of blood. I told her how after a hard day of work, one of these drone controllers might stop at a 7-11 to buy a gallon of milk or make it just in time to watch his child play in a Little League baseball game.

She was receptive to my criticism. She realizes that in a few months she'll be voting to decide who our next president will be. I told her that it was a simple matter to go on line and read the main international, national, and local stories of the day, and that if she would do this every day, not only would she know what was going on in her world, but it would all start to make a lot more sense to her.

After our conversation about drones, I put this little photo essay together and e-mailed it to her. I wrote: "3 pictures worth a million words."

2011-10-23T16:24:00.000-07:00

Romney's Religion Makes Him Unfit to Lead
This letter of mine was published the other day in my local newspaper. They kind of butchered it--their editor broke the logic of a good sentence by removing a sentence that went with it, and added some very bad commas, but at least they kept my idea intact!

2011-09-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

9/11 Conspiracy Theory

You will love this 5 Minute video. What do you think?

2011-09-05T15:59:00.000-07:00

Fukushima Cleanup is Job One

This video, compared to all the videos I've watched about Fukushima, is the best bottom-line report I've seen. It's impressive to me that they admit all this stuff on a mainstream show on CBS. Physicist Michio Kaku has gotten pretty big as a scientific spokesman, too big to risk saying something that is scientifically untrue, and his comments are both interesting and frightening. From a quick glance at the headlines in the paper and the news headlines on CNN.com, the average Amerikan is probably thinking that everything at Fukushima is pretty stabilized by now. Wow, I didn't know that there were still unusable pastures in England from the Chernobyl meltdown!

I think Job One on this planet right now is for all countries to work together to solve Fukushima to the highest level humanly possible. I was thinking that an international coalition should build the largest barge ever, each section of it the largest floating thing ever built. The barge could be insulated with lead and cement, loaded with the parts of the Fukushima power plants by gigantic front loaders, and sunk in the Mariana Trench, 7 miles deep, in a hole dug by a nuclear blast, and then capped by cement, lead, etc. I don't know shit about things like this, but our top scientists and engineers should be able to come up with some scenario for a gigantic international-scale project that could put this problem to rest.

Here are two things from Russia: the famous Chernobyl ghost Ferris wheel and Maria Sharapova.

2011-03-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

Money

I've been thinking about money a lot. It's an amazing thing! I think on every planet with intelligent beings, money is eventually invented to facilitate trading over distances.

It starts out as bits of rare metal, becomes coins, then bills. Some brilliant one invents interest. Eventually you have complex financial "instruments": credit default swaps, equity derivatives, etc. Karl Marx writes that there is a certain grace that comes with capital, but that ultimately "it becomes a monster with a mind of its own", and humans become its slave rather than its master. Corporations evolve by the rules of natural selection, and corporations with boards of directors that look to the future and towards sustainability are weeded out, because MY 401(k) retirement fund wants profit NOW. Only the immediate bottom line determines survival of corporations, and only the ones that promote war (a great business because its products quickly become obsolete or get destroyed) or otherwise rape the Earth (e.g., mountaintop coal removal or overfishing the world's great fisheries) prevail.

Money is like a very simple, elegantly written computer virus. Somehow it spawns more and more complicated destruction, even though the actual code for the virus was simply the concept that this pretty shell or this shiny piece of metal can stand for the value of your water buffalo or my basket of corn. The virus completely takes over the species and vastly changes the way it lives on its planet. If you flew over a large Native American village 1,000 years ago, it blended in with the planet so well that you might not even notice it. Compare that to New York City, an example of human habitation after the money computer virus starts to reach its complicated, destructive potential!

Democracy is like a fruit that is good for a while, but then goes rotten. At first it allows for stability, peace, and cooperation: the perfect ingredients for businesses to thrive and for a large middle class to grow. But when the businesses thrive TOO much and start to conglomerate, the trouble begins. The media then become corporatized and conglomerated as well, so now the messages telling us how and what to think are almost seamless. And that's how democracy goes rotten.

We don't know what comes next because humans in the past have never really taken democracy as far as we have. Compare Lady Gaga to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young singing "Ohio", that song about Kent State during the Vietnam War protests: "Four Dead in Ohio". "Gotta get down to it / Soldiers are gunning us down ..." The hippies listened to that song, which was a call to revolution, and decided, "Nah, too messy. Let's just get stoned".

I love capitalism because it comes up with the coolest stuff, but it needs to be treated like a highly radioactive material, with great care, and there needs to be a prime directive in its use: Every moneymaking enterprise or endeavor must help ALL people, must help or at least not hurt Earth, and must be sustainable indefinitely.

Thank you for reading my essay! Now here's a treat for you. Go to 4:15 (4 minutes and 15 seconds into this video) and watch/listen for about 5 minutes (or as long as you're interested). The real and very surprising explanation of money starts at about 7 minutes in. If you think it's strange that many modern people believe that a holy book was dictated by the creator of the Universe during the Bronze Age, you'll be surprised to see that you yourself have an almost religious faith in money. This is really amazing stuff, but I don't know how true it is because I never studied economics in college. Please click the comment link at the bottom of this post and weigh in on what you think about money.

2010-07-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

Go God Go

I had a long conversation with a young man in a book store about how dangerous and dysfunctional religion is on this crowded, contentious planet. He stood his ground and forced me to see his side of it -- that while fundamentalist religions ARE ludicrous and dangerous, ridding the world of them won't make much difference in solving humanity's biggest problems. He urged me to watch a two-part South Park ("Go God Go" and "Go God Go XII"), in which Cartman (second from right, below) uses a time machine to go into the future to get a new video game console, and sees how people live in a world without religion. Cartman notices that the future world, which had by this time jettisoned religion, is still just as fucked up and violent as our world is now.

I thought of this when I read a very interesting Chris Hedges essay, "Religious Institutions Are Ruled By the Morally Bankrupt -- But Should We Be Cheering Religion's Demise?" the other day, which deals with the same topic. Though Hedges is as sickened and repulsed by everyday fundamentalist religions as I am, in this essay he defends the existence of religion. His prose is beautiful, and he can nail religion better than anybody, but he is leery about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Hedges writes that religions in their early forms "challenged the power of the tribe, the closed society. They offered up the possibility that human beings, although limited by circumstance and human weakness, could shape and give direction to society and their own lives. [The early] religious thinkers were our first ethicists. And it is perhaps not accidental that the current pope, as well as the last one, drove out of the Catholic Church thousands of clergy and religious leaders who embodied these qualities, elevating the dregs to positions of leadership and leaving the pedophiles to run the Sunday schools."

Unlike me, Hedges is not in a big hurry to eradicate religion. After reading his beautifully written short essay, I definitely see his point. Although intellectuals blame religion for arbitrarily dividing people into oppositional groups, thereby leading to persecution, ethnic cleansing, and wars, it is likely simply a matter of human nature to be territorial and divisive and have wars against others, with or without religion.

Of course I still think religion has got to go. But now I realize that I've been acting as if eliminating fundamentalist religion was THE solution to fixing the human condition, when in fact, elimination of fundamentalism is just one of the main ingredients of the solution.

Humans will do really bad things completely outside of religious influence--for money, to have sex with the more attractive woman, for pride. Just to pick one problem out of the air, a problem as huge as religious fundamentalism, it is this: humans lack reverence for nature and the environment. The BP oil spill doesn't have anything to do with religion.

According to Chris Hedges (and me), Americans are already incredibly immoral. Hedges writes:

The consumer culture, as Nietzsche feared, has turned us into what Chalmers Johnson calls a "consumerist Sparta." The immigrants and the poor, all but invisible to us, work as serfs in this new temple of greed and imperialism. Curtis White in "The Middle Mind" argues that most Americans are aware of the brutality and injustice used to maintain the excesses of their consumer society and empire. He suspects they do not care. They don’t want to see what is done in their name. They do not want to look at the rows of flag-draped coffins or the horribly maimed bodies and faces of veterans or the human suffering in the blighted and deserted former manufacturing centers. It is too upsetting. Government and corporate censorship is welcomed and appreciated. It ensures that we remain [Nietzsche's] Last Men. And the death of religious institutions will only cement into place the new secular religion of the Last Man, the one that worships military power, personal advancement, hedonism and greed, the one that justifies our callousness toward the weak and the poor.

Hedges thinks that without religion, we will get even more callous. That seems plausible to me. Every Southern plantation owner had a Bible in his home, as the plantation owners brutalized millions of African slaves. Almost every family that supported Hitler had a Bible in their home, and Germany had beautiful cathedrals and churches everywhere. If cultures STEEPED in the loving teachings of Jesus could be so cruel, imagine what it might be like when the stupid among us no longer fear God. Maybe things would get worse!

Some of you are wondering: Why does Jeff hate religion so much? Well, I've got millions of good anti religion quotes, including these great ones from our Founding Fathers, but here's a new one from SF Chronicle columnist Mark Morford that says it all:

"The Bible? Cute cluster bomb of childish oral-tradition mythology told by angry, sexless white men and then translated from multiple dead languages and re-written and re-edited countless times throughout history for the sake of power and political gain and to control the ignorant masses via guilt, shame and fear. Oh, and also a lie. But, you know, a well-intentioned one. Sort of."

I went to a protest at Ocean Beach in San Francisco last week (see several pictures below), and I really felt like I was wasting my time. Why protest to get the attention of our representatives, when we don't even HAVE any representatives. We are living in a fascist state, period. I've been doing zen meditation for years, and coping very well with the cruel insanity of our empire. My kids are happy and healthy and both are the at the top of their classes. But I'm losing it. I just can't believe how horrible it is to be an American. (Ah, I know that line will rub some people the wrong way, but that's because they're ignoring the 7 million people we've murdered starting with the 3 million in the Vietnam War, plus a million Cambodians, a half million Laotians, a half million Central Americans (under Reagan), and under Bush 1, Clinton, and Bush 2, a good 2 million Iraqis.)

We either have to engage in violent revolution (which I don't have the stomach for) or start engaging in totally focused boycotts and strikes. We cannot tolerate any crossing of the picket line, so to speak. Or else we just have to suck it up and accept it that we live in a corporate-run state (the definition of fascism) with a puppet "president" named Barrack and a puppet Congress comprised mainly of prostitutes.

The American colonists used to tar and feather any neighbor who supported the British. If we ALL boycotted BP or GM or whoever we wanted to fuck with, they would be ruined quickly and they would start to see who their real bosses were and what America is really supposed to be about. Or if we bombed their assets, destroyed their data, and imprisoned their criminal CEO's, they'd start to see where the power in America really lives: We the People. Otherwise, we just have to bend over and take it. Protesting isn't going to work unless the crowds are in the millions. We had about 600 at our beach protest. Maybe the oil spill will wake people up, but I'm not holding my breath.

After you look at the cute protest pictures below, scroll all the way down for a tiny article called "Human Extinction." What do you think? Are these two prominent scientists right?

2010-03-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

What To Do?

This is a very strange time in my life because it is completely unclear to me what my next political move should be. When Bush 2 was president, it was so obvious. Every American who was a good human being automatically wanted to push for impeachment of this self-confessed criminal and to end our violent, costly, failed occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But now, with Obama at the helm, we are still feeling a bit lucky to have dodged the McCain/Palin bullet by electing a man who seemed to be a quantum leap above those two losers in wisdom and humanity, so it is not a simple matter to decide whether or not we want to support his insane 2,700-page health bill and allow him to gain some political momentum, or fight for something better. We're afraid to make him look bad because that would give the Republicans more momentum. Should we fight him on this because of what it objectively is--a broken, convoluted plan that allows the insurance companies to continue screwing us over, or support him because what the Republicans would do would be far worse?

What's right is as clear to me as ever. It is obvious to any sane, loving person that it is nothing less than barbaric to fail to provide health care to any child simply because his or her parent(s) don't make enough money or don't have a health plan at work. How dare anyone against single-payer health care celebrate Christmas!

When 36 countries, including Cyprus and Cuba, are ahead of us in infant mortality, and with all 36 of them having a strong public option or single-payer health insurance, how dare our leaders continue to let insurance companies run the show! To add insult to injury, all of these countries pulling ahead of us in public health are using our goddamned technology!

Yes, what's right is clear to me. But what to do next? I haven't a clue. The clear path for our country should be to end the violent occupations in the Middle East, establish an excellent modern health care system like Taiwan's, build a modern power grid and a renewable energy infrastructure, and revitalize education. But in a nation run by We the Corporations, making headway on achieving these goals is just about impossible.

Obviously, we need to wake people up, but that's just about impossible, too. The more ignorant and wrong people are, the more entrenched they are in their views. Regardless of what I do or don't do in my civic life, this commercial offers a great solution. Just do nothing! Even though this humorous/grim video commercial contains some goofy Illuminati stuff, the end result of our inactivity won't be much different than what is portrayed in it.

A Harvard study found that 44,789 Americans die every year for lack of health care. That's close to our death toll during the whole Vietnam War, every year. What kind of "Christian" would let a child go to school with an ear infection or rotten teeth? And do you ever think about how obscene it is that our representatives have government paid health care while we don't?

According to the study, an uninsured twin, with a lifestyle identical to her insured twin, is 40 percent more likely to die, in any given year, than her twin.

Please respond below by clicking the little comments link at the bottom of this post.

Thanks!

2009-10-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

Earth is Spherical and Religion is Over

Various cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including ancient Babylon, Ancient Egypt, pre-Classical Greece, and pre-17th century China. This view contrasts with the realization first recorded around the 4th century BC by natural philosophers of Classical Greece and later proved by brave seafarers, that Earth is spherical. Many Americans still believe the myth that it wasn't until Columbus sailed to the New World that Europeans knew Earth was round, but even in medieval Europe, it was already too late to write an "even-handed" Time magazine-style article about the flat vs. round issue. Even in 16th century China, a culture holding a seemingly immutable belief in a flat Earth, the whole mental paradigm shifted almost instantly once the evidence for a spherical world became overwhelming.

By the same token, evidence from the sciences of biology, chemistry, genetics, astrophysics, geology, etc. has piled up so high as to be overwhelming regarding the fact of evolution. Plus, for the first time ever in America, books against blind religious fundamentalism have hit the mainstream, with authors such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Chris Hedges, and Christopher Hitchens writing NYT Bestsellers taking on religion. So again, major segments of humanity, including the whole developed world, are on the edge of another huge and almost instantaneous paradigm shift. Like the belief in a flat Earth in 16th century China, fundamentalist religion is just about over. Unfortunately, most people don't know it yet.

Eighty percent of the world's people still believe that the creator of the Universe dictated a book. Many believe this so strongly that they will kill other people who believe that a different creator dictated a different book. Many Americans reading this would immediately think, "Yeah, those damned Muslims, blowing people up over religious differences," forgetting that a large percentage of Americans in the 1960's and 70's, mostly "Christian" at the time, had little problem with their government killing hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people ("godless communists"), almost as casually as if they were ants at a picnic. If we had information about a domestic terrorist, such as Tim McVeigh, and we knew that he was hiding, in the Bronx for example, would we take out an entire block in order to get to him? The answer is no, we wouldn't. People in this country would be outraged if we bombed a block and killed civilians to get to this guy, and yet that's what we're doing every day with our killer drones to non-Christians in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But already, especially in the developed world, we're seeing more and more "Christians" believing in evolution. In 2009, it's almost impossible not to believe in evolution and still be sane, with so many scientific disciplines seamlessly proving it. For the "holy book" idolizers, knowledge of evolution seems to diminish the majesty of God. Yet with a slightly open mind, evolution and all the other amazing laws of the Universe should only lead us to feel more awe in the face of Creation!

What has been diminished is the stature of the primitive mythology books, written by superstitious, perhaps even insane men, at the dawn of the Iron Age, that people have dragged into modern times as literal guides to cosmology and correct human behavior. Literally billions of people still base their lives on the stories in these books, a pathological, dysfunctional behavior that imperils all of humankind.

I've had "Christian"-deprogramming Web sites for 15 years (check out my vintage early-1990's web page design!--and click on the picture). Why do I bother? It's not just some pet peeve of mine. Fundamentalist religion is like a computer virus, which cripples the function of a computer. Teaching fundamentalist religion to a child is a serious type of child abuse. Sexual child abuse damages a child's self image, confidence, and attitude about sexuality, but teaching fundamentalist religion often damages a child's thinking capability for life. Fundamentalist religion is not a benign thing, like somebody's preference of one professional baseball team over another. President Reagan invited televangelists Hal Lindsey and Jerry Falwell into the Pentagon to advise him on nuclear weapons policy! Sarah Palin, chosen by almost half of us Americans to be second in command of our nuclear arsenal, would have gladly started World War Three in the name of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps in one or two more generations, fundamentalist religion in America will become a harmless hobby, like astrology. There won't be any need for laws or prohibitions against it because it will become conversationally inappropriate, and no one who adheres to it would ever be trusted with any kind of power or serious responsibility. It might take several more generations for people in some other countries to realize the absurdity of fundamentalist religion, just as it took centuries for the Chinese to comprehend what the ancient Greek mathematicians had discovered about Earth's shape.

If any of you take exception to anything I've written here, please read these very few Sam Harris quotes, carefully selected from two of his books I've read, before you respond. If you still feel like responding, I will of course answer every comment. I ask that you please comment by clicking the "Comments" link right below this post, so that others can see your comment and perhaps comment on your ideas. Posting anonymously is fine.

From The End of Faith:

"How is it that the absurdity of this idea [that certain books were written by God] does not bring us, hourly, to our knees? It is safe to say that few of us would have thought so many people could believe such a thing, if they didn't actually believe it. Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in."

From The End of Faith:

"Our situation is this: most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the universe has written a book. We have the misfortune of having many such books on hand, each making an exclusive claim as to its infallibility. People tend to organize themselves into factions according to which of these incompatible claims they accept--rather than on the basis of language, skin color, location of birth, or any other criterion of tribalism. Each of these texts urges its readers to adopt a variety of beliefs and practices, some of which are benign, many of which are not. All are in perverse agreement on one point of fundamental importance, however: "respect" for other faiths, or for the views of unbelievers, is not an attitude that God endorses. While all faiths have been touched, here and there by the spirit of ecumenicalism, the central tenet of every religious tradition is that all others are mere repositories of error, or, at best, dangerously incomplete. Intolerance is thus intrinsic to every creed. Once a person believes--really believes--that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one."

From The End of Faith:

"While Christianity has few living inquisitors today, Islam has many. In the next chapter we will see that in our opposition to the world view of Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and fourteenth-century hordes are pouring into our world. Unfortunately, they are now armed with twenty-first-century weapons."

From Letter to a Christian Nation:

"Your qualms about embryonic stem-cell research are similarly obscene. Here are the facts: stem-cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century of medicine. It could offer therapeutic breakthroughs for every disease or injury process that human beings suffer--for the simple reason that embryonic stem cells can become any tissue in the human body. This research may also be essential for our understanding of cancer, along with a wide variety of developmental disorders. Given these facts, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the promise of stem-cell research. It is true, of course, that research on embryonic stem cells entails the destruction of three-day-old human embryos. This is what worries you.

"Let us look at the details. A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. It is worth remembering, in this context, that when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst."

From the conclusion of Letter to a Christian Nation (this quote spoken to a typical American Christian):

"Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well--by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God. This letter has been an expression of that amazement--and, perhaps, of a little hope."

2009-08-09T09:56:00.000-07:00

Happy Double Anniversary! Blasting caps!

The brave third cousin of my brave (now deceased) niece Lisa just wrote a surprising article in commemoration of the 64the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima (three days ago) and Nagasaki (today). Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers fame), as you probably know, at great risk to himself and his family, knocked over the first big domino that eventually led to the fall of Richard Nixon.

Ellsberg doubts that even one percent of Americans have an understanding of the difference in explosive force between a Hiroshima-size atom bomb and a hydrogen bomb.

Here's an excerpt:

Every one of our many thousands of H-bombs, the thermonuclear fusion bombs that arm our strategic forces, requires a Nagasaki-type A-bomb as its detonator. (I doubt that one American in a hundred knows that simple fact, and thus has a clear understanding of the difference between A- and H-bombs, or of the reality of the thermonuclear arsenals of the last 50 years.

Our popular image of nuclear war--from the familiar pictures of the devastation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima--is grotesquely misleading. Those pictures show us only what happens to humans and buildings when they are hit by what is now just the detonating cap for a modern nuclear weapon.

Hiroshima Day: America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years

Posted on Aug 5, 2009

By Daniel Ellsberg

To leave a comment for Mr. Ellsberg, click here.

To leave a comment for me, please click the comment link below. Anonymous comments are fine.

2009-07-12T17:26:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin and Sponge Bob in 2012

Here's a picture of our neighbor's truck. His Bush/Cheney '04 sticker makes me sad and mad every time I see it (we go to work and come home at about the same time). And I noticed this morning, when he stopped at the little neighborhood cafe, that he has a brand new sticker:

This guy, not the Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin neocons, not the economy or climate change or immigration, is THE top problem in America. We have the power and the wealth to become a pretty cool country ALMOST OVERNIGHT if half of our people weren't morons. The average American car sits unused 22 hours a day and the average American commute is 16 miles. GM had a production ready electric car in 1999, the EV1, yet after testing it and leasing out about 1,000 of them, they took them all back and crushed them and sold the battery technology to Exxon/Mobil. The drill-baby-drill mentality prevailed.

I do, however, realize it's not that simple. I've finished Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father, and I'm halfway through his second, The Audacity of Hope, and I'm learning from him that by focusing on what tears us apart rather than on what binds us together, "conservative" and "liberal" adversaries push one another to extreme positions.

I'm actually kind of a Republican at heart, and I do understand where these guys are coming from. If we "liberals" were given free reign, the world we'd make might not be a utopia at all, but more like a communist nightmare. Capitalism works great when you have a gigantic almost-virgin land mass you can rape, while communism seems to go very, very bad very, very quickly no matter what.

But now that the whole world is in peril, and since there are no more virgin continents to settle and rape (unless we want to make Africa the new America and kill off those pesky Africans like we did the Native Americans), we Americans really need to find a brilliant amalgam of capitalism and socialism. There are literally millions of possible permutations of human economic activity possible, but it is morons like our neighbor who put it all in terms of only two choices, rather dead than red. And it is morons on our side that make a more socially responsible world seem so goofy, weak, and corrupt, e.g., teaching Ebonics as a real, viable language. Our neighbor, who might have some valid insight about the potential horrors of socialism, digs his heels in even more and becomes almost clownish in his politics.

On some level he knows that his new Palin sticker makes him look stupid. But just as rap and hip-hop music have made the ghetto (a sad and tragic place if there ever was one!) seem cool, somehow, with the popularity of shows such as "Jackass," "Sponge Bob," and "The O'Reilly Factor," STUPIDITY has become cool!

This neighbor is unteachable. However, if he had to experience terror and extreme physical hardship due to the policies of his capitalist masters, he might completely change his tune. He may soon have the chance to go through just such hardships, thanks to his voting against himself (and against me and my children and you and yours) during the last few election cycles. If I sound a little self righteous, it's just that it's very hard for me to abide people who think it's OK to hog the supplies on a lifeboat, that they're somehow better than the other passengers, especially when they call themselves "Christians."

2009-03-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Explanation of The Split

By Richard Hamilton-Gibbs

In the scientific world, where experiments can be repeated by other scientists to confirm consistent outcomes, the only question is the integrity of the scientists conducting the studies. Scientific fraud is relatively rare, because it is exposed by the work of other scientists when they do not get the same results. Scientific fraud also disposes of the reputations of the fraudulent scientists once and for all. For example, Korean researcher Hwang Woo-Suk was exposed as a confidence trickster in stem cell research. His findings have been completely discredited, and are not quoted by even scientific nut-cases as "proof" for anything.

In the real world, many world events are "one-time", and will not be repeated. Then, there is simply a question of Belief. Do you believe the event actually happened?

This is compounded by the acceptance that politicians recounting current events are not held to the same standard of honesty as scientists. In fact, it is common for American politicians to lie, and the American people regard this kind of "flexibility" with the truth as acceptable, for any number of reasons ranging from national security issues to economic stability.

For example, I have long considered the invasion of Iraq as a dreadful error, wrong on so many levels, and justified by non-existent WMD claims by the Bush White House.

However a conservative friend of mine has suggested to me that there were WMD's in Iraq, and he listens to Republican conspiracy theorists, who turn up on late night radio and claim that they Believe the WMD's were there in Iraq, but they were spirited over the border into Syria during the invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, or somehow magically concealed.

This is a perfect example of an event that, if it happened, only happened once. If those weapons were spirited away into Syria, it happened in a very tight time window. To test this theory, the event cannot be repeated, and there appear to be no eye-witnesses, just True Believers.

To reach any logical conclusion requires Investigation, not unsubstantiated Belief, which means examining every information source on the subject, before making your personal judgment of what happened. Along the way, you have to take into account that many people will tell self-serving untruths, or quote unreliable sources themselves.

At the end of this analysis, people will all believe different things, based on the credibility they assign to their different sources. So a committed Bushie will still be saying today that they believe there are still WMD's somewhere that we haven't found, and anti-Bushie's will be saying today that the whole GWB White House line was always a fraud to justify invasion.

I think a lot of this has to do with how fearful people are about the motivations and intentions of the rest of the world, and what they then perceive we need to do to protect ourselves from them.

My conservative friend has conservative instincts that lead him to see the rest of the world as very threatening. This allows him to see GWB in a positive light as doing something about a dangerous world. Now he is not a bad person, but he tends to use information sources that reinforce his existing beliefs, and discount sources that he dislikes. In this, at times he is as susceptible as any Creationist to the dogma of the True Believer, by discounting any information from any source he dislikes.

This lack of rigor at times needs gentle correction, and that may be because he is under a misconception of how something works, or the relevance it has in any given situation. He needs to have a clear logical pathway, but getting rid of his Belief System can be an impediment to clear thinking. For example, he so loathes Hillary Clinton (and Bill) that there is no point in discussing anything related to them. There is no way either of them can ever redeem themselves, and any successes they have will always be countered by any bad tales, even fictional tales, to make them look either incompetent or evil.

My progressive friends, on the other hand, make connections of great compassion, and do not see the rest of the world as nearly as threatening. Accordingly, they are much more into outreach and helping, and they see the military interventions that have been committed in their name as Americans as not being justified, and rank them as atrocities. Accordingly, the numbers of Vietnamese who died as a result of American intervention there, they take some responsibility for. Many conservative Americans find reasons to justify America's involvement, and as a New Zealander, we suffer from the same issues, because NZ was there supporting the American effort (with regular NZ Army troops).

Now at times, either view is correct. There are plenty of instances where people have taken advantage of the caring efforts of others to abuse them. There are also plenty of instances where paranoia has led to heavy-handed mass-murder.

Meanwhile, nothing much is going to change with the US Military, unless this economic meltdown impacts US spending.

http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13314915

This nicely illustrates the huge disparity of US "defense" spending compared to the rest of the world. The next 14 players all added together still fall about $100 billion short of US expenditures.

I think this is probably the difference between the Left and Right wing. Fear. Left-wingers do not fear the rest of the world so much. When, as a Left-Winger, you express anger at the neocon approach to "peacekeeping", neocons feel even more threatened, and more fearful, and talk about a "more dangerous world", because they feel the need to exert more control at any cost over the elements in the world they perceive as a threat they fear. Left-wing resistance to this control makes neocons very paranoid, and have them perceiving the Left Wingers as part of the problem. Neocons often talk about Liberal Conspiracies, Bleeding Heart Liberals, and Commies, to group the less fearful into the Opposition they have to defeat. And as I mentioned before, True Believers, in their paranoia, regard killing their enemies as a viable solution to their problems.

Both sides can quote examples of the failed policies of the other. Left- and right-wingers each have their successes and failures, and history always tells the story, and the longer ago the events happened, the more accurate the history becomes, because it is not such an emotional issue to the historian, unless it is a pivotal part of his Belief System. For example, ask a Christian Fundamentalist if Jesus rose from the grave, and he will look at you as if you must be nuts to even ask that question, because for them, the answer is "of course!".

And yet, there are other historians who can equally argue that Jesus never existed. That he was a historical fable, of whom the first writings appeared about 60 years after his death, with no record in the secular record of his ever having even existed!

So this is an example of how Belief Systems are built, and persist, and can continue to be supported by people who are not bad people, just totally different in what they choose to believe.

What we choose to believe is always a personal choice. Changing other people's beliefs is often impossible, and is not something I try to do.

I think Google got it in one with their company slogan, "Don't be evil".

I think we all have to define what we regard as evil, or "intentional behavior that is unacceptable to me personally", and make our case for our positions. Too often, people have these underlying beliefs that they have not thought through, and as a result, build a tower of logic that has no real support even in their own belief system. When they examine their fundamentals, they themselves discover that the logical axioms on which they have positioned their beliefs are so flawed that they need to completely rethink their position.

Unfortunately, it is often an impossible task to get people to examine their basic axioms, because they cannot divorce their examination of their basic axioms from the body of prejudice they have built based on these axioms.

And I think it comes down to fear. The more fearful we are, the more essential it is that "we kill them before they kill us." It is easier to adopt this path when we have no empathy for the "enemy", and do not take their humanity into account.

I think this topic of reconciling people who have very different world views is becoming more and more important. To get into the real basics of what people believe, and why, and how to sift information from dishonest sources to reach the multiple possible logical conclusions, and evaluate all of them to choose what we believe in.

For a more successful future, we need Americans to become a lot more logical in their information analysis, and less trusting of their beliefs.

2009-03-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

Split in America

I want to ask all of you to think about how to heal the split in America. I might not have time to answer every response--there are 441 of you on my email list, and I know most of you, plus many of you send out my stuff to others--but you know I will read every one carefully.

Here, below, is a perfect example of the split, a letter to the SF Chronicle by my friend Karl and a response to it. Please read them both and then think about how we can bring these two sides together.

Karl's letter:

Isn't it about time for GOP apologies?

As Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele falls all over himself to apologize to the real leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, I think it is a good time to ask the Republicans to go one further and apologize to Americans.

Apologizing for such crimes as lying, and starting a war based on some of those lies, torturing, phone tapping, judge fixing, not to mention offshoring our jobs, making the way for fraud on Wall Street, and otherwise ruining the economy.

It was just a few days ago that Limbaugh was called out for being incendiary and when he asked for them, the apologies even came on his radio program.

So we can wait a few days, now that you Republicans know that America wants you to apologize. You know where to find us.

Karl Hodges

Response to Karl's letter:

Here's a Republican apology

Karl Hodges wants Republicans to apologize for America's problems. He is correct; the GOP owes America an apology, and also a promise to make amends.

As chairman of the San Francisco Republican Assembly, I apologize to every man, woman and child in America. We Republicans failed to do our job to defeat the most unaccomplished and unqualified presidential candidate in history. We Republicans expected the media to expose a glib community organizer from Chicago who never held a job. We apologize for failing to convince rational adults that mindless slogans will not protect the life, liberty and property of the American people and the free world.

America's investors know this president is using the present crisis to dismantle capitalism. That's why the stock market is crashing and Americans are losing their retirement savings. America's adversaries: Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and al Qaeda know this president opposed liberation of 25 million Iraqis, and heads the party that whined, "this war is lost." That's why the world is a more dangerous place.

But an apology is not enough; the GOP also must make amends for what it failed to do in November 2008. Therefore, we Republicans will work harder to ensure that this president fails to impose European socialism and second-rate health care on America. We will also tell every American what this president never will tell: "We will pay any price, bear any burden to assure the survival of liberty," and with no apologies.

Mike DeNunzio

Let me just add this, now that you've read both letters: The atom bomb that ended our war with Japan (whether it was right to use it or not) was not a Democrat or a Republican atom bomb, it was an AMERICAN atom bomb. With the economy tanking, we're probably in more immediate trouble than we were in during World War II, and yet America has become so divided that we're almost crippled when it comes to dealing with the problem.

Please comment below, or send me an email.

2009-01-03T13:47:00.000-08:00

Republican IT Specialist Dies in Plane Crash

Was Michael Connell assassinated?

This short, interesting interview really makes you wonder. Seems like at the last minute they're trying to dispose of some dirty laundry.

2008-12-17T17:39:00.000-08:00

Questions That I Have for the Secret Service

Here's a very funny blog entry, 10 questions by Jon Friedman. I wrote some comments, which follow, and I hope you will click the comment link and add your own two-cents worth as well. I'm curious what you think about the incident referred to in Friedman's blog and how you feel about this rather strange interim period we're going through right now.

Shouldn't you have jumped in front of that shoe? [after clicking the link, scroll down to see video]
Shouldn't you have jumped in front of that second shoe?
Second shoe = the one thrown after being removed from foot after first shoe was thrown.
Let's say people had three feet. Would you have allowed a third shoe to fly unimpeded?
While the shoe was in the air, were you like, "Oh, its just a shoe."
Same question about the second shoe.
Do you think this is funny, "Throw a shoe at me once, shame on--you. Throw a shoe--you throw a shoe, you can't throw a shoe again."
Is there not "protection training" for lunatics launching objects?
Let's say there isn't training for that--but do they tell you that if someone does throw (or shoot) something to be on the alert in case they want to repeat this behavior?
Where were you?

BONUS QUESTION: Do you think the Iraqis want us there? (Hint: their journalists are throwing their shoes at Bush)

This blog was originally posted here: http://www.236.com/blog/w/jon_friedman/questions_that_i_have_for_the_10713.php

You might find it interesting to read some of the commentary written about the Secret Service over the past couple of days, since Obama's life is going to depend on these guys doing a stellar job. Obama must be scratching his head right now and wondering why the hell he ever wanted to be president.

Here's why I haven't been posting here lately: I've been kind of tongue-tied since Obama was elected--I feel that because the way our system has been designed, we all had a LOT of power to effect huge change on November 4, and I worked very hard during the two years leading up to the election to wake up as many people as possible for that moment. And we truly succeeded, whether Obama turns out to be a great leader or not, because it's simply a fact that McCain/Palin was a national disaster in the making. Because of a wonderful aspect of our society that is still functional, i.e., that we can vote in a reasonably fair manner, we were able to literally win a war (McCain/Palin were actual enemies of regular working Americans, and we vanquished them!) in a matter of minutes, without a drop of blood being spilled.

But now that this incredibly powerful collective action is over, I feel quite powerless. One guy is saving some whales, a smart lady here in the Bay Area is saving some endangered smelt in the Delta, a guy at work is writing a blog about plug-in hybrid cars, but at this moment, America is still hemorrhaging money, still escalating its occupation of Afghanistan, still floating a huge armada off the Straights of Hormuz, ready to attack Iran at any moment, still creating 25 percent of the world's carbon emissions, still putting 6 percent of its black men in cages (prisons), etc.

Since we remain so fragmented politically, the chance for collective action is, at the moment, on hold. Most people are just freaking out about money, jobs, buying Christmas presents, etc. Since our system somewhat "worked" this November, I feel humbled, and it's a good thing for me. I no longer feel like I have to save the world. I'm a technical writer at a manufacturing company, and Obama is the leader of the free world. I'm finally content to lay back a bit and do my job, and hope that Obama will do his.

About Muntadar al-Zaidi, I simply must say something, even though Bush is well on his way out and you all must be sick of me talking about him. I personally have felt so incredibly oppressed by the Bush/Cheney government, so incredibly degraded, so very freaked out (absolutely like being stuck in a "Twilight Zone" episode without end!), that I just have to say something about Mr. al-Zaidi. He is the hero of Iraq and of all journalists everywhere, the man who threw two shoes spot-on at Bush's head and delivered one of the most eloquent speeches ever, all in approximately 4 seconds.

Here's his speech: "This is a farewell kiss, you dog," he yelled in Arabic as he threw his shoes. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

Some people asked to be removed from my mailing list when I mass e-mailed this link, which just gives an evenhanded account of the shoe-throwing incident. Since it's BBC, they gave Bush more time to talk about the meaning of the attack than our media did. I suppose some people thought it was offensive that I seemed to delight in an Iraqi throwing a shoe at our president. But it's not quite that simple. I've just been feeling incredibly oppressed by the weight of the ignorance of almost half of all American adults, who could vote for Sarah Palin with a straight face and could actually consider this moron fit to lead our great, powerful, modern, free country! I guess it was a relief for me to see someone finally act genuine, instead of going along with the charade that Bush is a real president and that somehow what he's doing makes sense.

And this shoe throwing incident expressed perfectly the feelings of several billion people on our small planet. Having been an English major (BA and MA in English), I really like symbols and metaphors, and this shoe attack, a sign of huge disrespect in the Arab world, was a perfect symbol for the outrage I feel at how my country has been abused, ripped off, and despoiled, and how we've been forced to finance the murder of a million people with our tax dollars and with the future labor of our children, who will pay back China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia the money our government borrowed to accomplish it.

According to Robert Kennedy Jr., for half the cost of the Iraq invasion and occupation, we could have built a new electricity grid, making it possible for wind farmers and solar power collectors to effectively put the power they generate onto the grid and sell it. We could have been free, in short order, of all need for oil from the Middle East. If you get a chance, download the speech linked above and put it on your MP3 player. It will blow your mind.

I heard that Muntadar al-Zaidi has a broken arm and that he's been sentenced to 2-7 years in prison. I think that since he's a national hero, he probably won't have to do all that time, and the misfortunes he's going through right now might give him some real "street cred" that will allow him later on to be a policy maker instead of a policy protester.

Take care, and happy holidays to all!

2008-11-22T15:19:00.000-08:00

Change or No Change?

Change or no change, that is the question. It's up to you. We must be vigilant from the very beginning of the Obama presidency. We must swear to ourselves and to one another: never again! We must never again allow ourselves to be degraded and our country to be wounded by criminal leaders. We must truly become the leaders.

Here is a starting point. People are already talking about the Clinton recycles and right-wing operatives Obama is choosing for his cabinet and advisors. Here is an evenhanded article, "This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House," by Jeremy Scahill, that gives you a nice (but unfortunately scary) thumbnail description of the people he's already chosen. I hope and pray that Obama will be able to control these powerful people and direct their diabolical powers towards working for good, but I fear that it's totally up to us.

What do you think?

2008-11-12T20:18:00.000-08:00

Can You Believe This Bumper Sticker?

A few days ago I saw this bumper sticker on the back of a Corolla in Dixon, California, and took a picture of it. You may ask yourself, "How could such a sticker exist?" The short article below offers a possible explanation.

America the Illiterate

By Chris Hedges

We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.

Read the rest of the article here! And please leave a comment for me by clicking the "comment" link below.

2008-10-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

Look What Someone Did to My Truck!

You have all seen my truck (click on the picture to view the beautiful girl blocked by my "links" panel). I've had bumper stickers something like these on the tailgate for several years now, and never once did anyone remove a sticker or do anything to harm my truck. But finally something happened. You won't believe what someone did to my truck the other day. Scroll down past this "before" picture to see!

Look what someone left under my windshield wiper!

And in "keeping the faith," here's a letter of mine that was published yesterday:

2008-10-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

Sunday Comics! Secret Message for Republicans

They're trying to tell you something. Three different strips on this one Sunday morning! In a small-town newspaper! What could be more mainstream than Sunday comics? It's just not plausible to say that people intending to vote for McCain simply don't know what's going on. They are being told from so many different directions and in so many different ways!

Click on images to make them bigger and more readable.

2008-10-11T12:21:00.001-07:00

Trains

This picture has pretty much gone viral on the Internet, but it was missing something. A friend of mine just added the present administration to it. Now it's complete!

2008-09-18T19:52:00.000-07:00

The Jerry Springer Show

I had a good letter published today in my town's newspaper. (I live in California and my town has 145,000 people.) They kind of messed it up by leaving out a key paragraph about Sara Palin. And they changed "a million" to "millions" regarding deaths caused by the American occupation of Iraq, which kind of blows my credibility all to hell. But still, it's a pretty radical letter and I'm happy they printed it. If you are interested, you can see the actual letter I sent them (scroll down past the scanned letter below)--the parts they messed up I've put in red. I hope by now everyone knows about McCain singing "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boy's "Barbara Ann."

Click on this scanned letter to make it much larger and easier to read:

Dear Editor,

We have a simple binary choice to make in less than two months. We have the power to win what is potentially a huge military victory without firing a single shot or spilling a single drop of blood. Thanks to our Founders and our American ancestors, we have a system in place that will allow us to stop a potentially devastating enemy of America. We have the power to stop a national emergency much bigger than Hurricane Katrina from happening. We can stop McCain from becoming president by simply voting for Obama (the only password, like it or not, that can be keyed in at this point in time that will prevent the McCain virus from running).

That is the task at hand. Since statistically it's obvious that McCain can easily win the election if we don't get enough people out to vote for Obama, then this simple understanding of reality points to where our focus should be.

The choice of Sara Palin as future VP by the government that has broken our army, robbed our treasury, and destroyed our alliances throughout the world shows just how blatantly disrespectful the Bush/Cheney/McCain neocon government is towards We the People, especially disrespectful to the Republicans whose votes they expect to win.

In this bizarre episode of the Twilight Zone, we are sitting in a studio audience watching the Jerry Springer Show, when the strangest thing happens. Everything outside the studio where the show is being taped turns into the Jerry Springer Show as well. Our whole nation becomes the Jerry Springer Show. But instead of lasting for a half hour, this special episode combining the Twilight Zone and the Springer Show lasts for four years, and millions of people get killed. Bush's illegal, costly, unending occupation in Iraq has resulted in over a million deaths and over five million people driven from their homes and home towns plus hundreds of thousands of orphaned children. Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! How many people will McCain/Palin kill in our name when they bomb-bomb-bomb Iran?

Sincerely,

Jeff

2008-08-30T22:54:00.000-07:00

Imagine No Religion

Many years ago when I got my first decent computer, a Gateway 486 with Windows 3.11 and a 14.4 telephone modem (about a thousand times slower than my present DSL connection), I just automatically knew that the most important thing I could do on line was work towards the eradication of religion.

After a couple of years, people started quitting AOL and going on the real Internet, and I downloaded a cool thing called a Web browser, and that was it. I quickly learned how to make Web pages, and the first pages I made dealt with meditation, the philosophy of Alan Watts, and the insanity of religion. I’ve written many essays about religion. Then, in 2007, I discovered Sam Harris and his The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. This young neurophysicist was doing the same thing I was doing, but so much better!

However, even though his books were New York Times Bestsellers, I don’t even think he’s made a measurable dent in the number of people in the world victim to the computing virus of the human brain known as fundamentalist religion.

I wonder how Sam Harris would feel about the new crop of 15-year-old gamers trying to horn in on his anti-religion territory. As I was humbled by his work, I wonder if he’d be humbled by theirs.

Let’s do a comparison. After careful reading of his two books, I think that this one from The End of Faith is one of the most powerful paragraphs Harris has written:

"How is it that the absurdity of this idea [that certain books were written by God] does not bring us, hourly, to our knees? It is safe to say that few of us would have thought so many people could believe such a thing, if they didn't ACTUALLY believe it. Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain FILMS were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--ANYTHING--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in."

Now compare it to this graphic put together by a 15-year-old gamer:

Ok, here’s another great Sam Harris quote, again from The End of Faith:

"Our situation is this: most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the universe has written a book. We have the misfortune of having many such books on hand, each making an exclusive claim as to its infallibility. People tend to organize themselves into factions according to which of these incompatible claims they accept--rather than on the basis of language, skin color, location of birth, or any other criterion of tribalism. Each of these texts urges its readers to adopt a variety of beliefs and practices, some of which are benign, many of which are not. All are in perverse agreement on one point of fundamental importance, however: "respect" for other faiths, or for the views of unbelievers, is not an attitude that God endorses. While all faiths have been touched, here and there by the spirit of ecumenicalism, the central tenet of every religious tradition is that all others are mere repositories of error, or, at best, dangerously incomplete. Intolerance is thus intrinsic to every creed. Once a person believes--REALLY believes--that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one."

How do you think it stands up to the following explanation of the Bible by a 16-year-old gamer. Note that to understand the gamer lingo used in this explanation--"cheat codes," "b&," and a few other gamer slang words and acronyms--you may need to refer to my little vocabulary key below the graphic. Cheat codes, for example, are keyboard shortcuts you can type into a computer game to give you special powers in that game. I once learned how to type a complicated 6-key shortcut to activate the God code on Doom, so I could kill the horrible aliens with total impunity, completely invulnerable to their attacks. After months of being beaten back by them, this was the only way I could see what the higher levels in the game looked like. So anyway, check this out:

troll: person who purposely taunts for negative replies on Web forums

GTFO: get the fuck out

showing tits: The 4chan.org forum motto is “tits or GTFO”

b&: banned from a forum. "perma b&" means permanently banned.

trollbait: someone who falls victim (gets sucked into a prohibited negative conversation) to the troll

pwning: extreme beating (owning) of an opponent in an online game

LOL: laugh out loud

emo: emotional, sometimes gothic kids

fap: masturbate

rcon: remote control

CP: processing power

ska punk: somebody into reggae/punk fusion music

I’m really afraid of religious people because they are, by definition, irrational and illogical. Also, it’s interesting that while all religions are perfectly analogous to computer viruses, just as some computer viruses are relatively harmless--merely a nuisance--some viruses can have catastrophic impact on your hard drive, for example deleting all your data or even corrupting all data on a whole network. So it is with Christianity compared to Islam. Islam seems far more dangerous.

However, Christianity as we practice it in America, is quite dangerous as well. Eight out of ten faith-based voters voted for George W. Bush in 2004, according to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, despite the fact that this poster boy for the Devil had already murdered tens of thousands of Iraqis and basically destroyed the whole country of Iraq. But a huge difference between Christianity and Islam is that I can be very critical of Christianity and probably get away with it (although posting this blog entry definitely scares me--it doesn’t take much imagination to picture a Christian, in the name of the loving Jesus, knocking on my door and throwing acid in my face or in the face of my little daughter).

Think about the graphics these two bright teenagers have put together and then think about how crazy and hurt a person would have to be to actually be a fundamentalist! How can you trust such a person?

My niece Lisa watched in horror as a crazy man in San Francisco pounded his own face to a pulp against a cement garbage container. This is the physical equivalent to believing in a fundamentalist religion. Fundamentalist book-idolizing religion is intellectual suicide. And, in Alan Watts' words, "it is positive un-faith since it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness--an act of trust in the unknown."

Can you imagine no religion? John Lennon could. Listen to this amazing Lennon song. Do you remember it?

This sculpture (I don't know who did it or even its location) is the world "Christian" McCain voters are going to choose this November 4th.

Not one real Christian will vote for McCain.

2008-08-21T19:08:00.000-07:00

Your Software Is a Virus

I've enjoyed the debate between Mr. Fluorescent (Robbie) and German Psycho. Robbie, I really enjoyed your first comment to my "McCain and Obama--Bad Software" post, and it gives me an opportunity to make myself even more clear (if that's possible) than I already have. I also enjoy your writing style, and I learned a lot about Obama that I didn't know, or, actually, that I kind of did know it, but hadn't let it all gel yet. You are as good at dissing Obama as I am at dissing Bush.

When it comes to Obama's shortcomings, I admit I've kept my head in the sand a bit. I agree with almost every word you write about Obama and I agree wholeheartedly that it is sickening to always have to vote for the "least worst." But I want you to realize something: Months ago when Congressman Dennis Kucinich was still in the running, I hosted Kucinich house parties, bought lawn signs and bumper stickers, and made phone calls. Our two-party system is completely unworkable. I've been registered Green before, and I don't call myself a Democrat.

There was a chance that a large movement to elect Kucinich could have congealed and grown, even snowballed. It's always at least theoretically possible that some charismatic leader could come onto the national stage and speak the truth in such a way that people would actually listen and follow that person. But now, less than two and a half months away from the election, given the software and operating system we have to work with, it is too late. It's a fact, Robbie, verifiable by statistically valid polling, that because of our incredibly obsolete, broken operating system (the operating system is the the American people, 60 percent of whom still believe that the creator of the Universe wrote a book), only certain software will run on this machine.

At this late date, and with the candidates we have, and with the level of ignorance still prevalent in our society, it is impossible for a mass movement to start behind any of the alternative candidates. I repeat, this is proveable by statistically valid polls. Cynthia McKinney is not suddenly going to become super popular, and people aren't going to suddenly be excited by angry old Ralph Nader! It aint gonna happen, Robbie. True, something out of the ordinary could happen--an assassination, a candidate's plane crash, a visit from aliens. But barring something extremely out of the ordinary, we're going to go to our polling places on November 4 and pulling the lever for either Obama or McCain.

You might want a rockin' kick-ass computer like I have . . .

but right now, this is the computer that you have:

A skilled user can do a lot with an old computer. But if it's crippled with viruses, it becomes junk, and then the user is out of business. There is only one password on this computer in its present configuration that will stop the McCain virus, and that's "Obama."

A Carter is not a Nixon, and a Gore is not a Bush. Eisenhower was not a Bush. There are huge differences. Do you think Eisenhower would have let people die in the streets of New Orleans and babies go several days without water after Katrina?

The reason that Obama initially got so much young and progressive support--the amazing "Yes We Can" video put together by Will-I-Am and featuring Scarlet Johansson, the huge rallies, the incredible amount of money Obama raised from small donations--was that he made great speeches that talk to the good in us. The other candidates only make speeches that sound, to most educated people, no matter what their political stripe, like blatant propaganda tilted towards the interests of billionaires. Obama is married to a real black woman, not a golden Beyonce-type wanna-be-white woman with blonde straightened hair. And they have two little daughters who will have to breathe the mercury in the air and drink radioactive water if things don't turn around.

It sickens me the compromises he's made, but those are the software workarounds necessary on this broken operating system! Just take one minute and watch this amazing Obama Smackdown video and listen to the speech Barack Obama made in 2002 about the war. It's juxtaposed with a speech by Johnny Edwards, made at the same time, in which Edwards uses his super-lawyer skills and sells the hell out of Bush's coming attack on a sovereign non-belligerent nation.

There are not two sides to the truth.

German Psycho and you are both more knowledgeable than I about some of the specifics of our occupation of Afghanistan. (Although your friend's experience about drug eradication there is giving you a skewed idea of what the war is really about. Opium growing has increased exponentially during our occupation, and American soldiers in many areas walk through opium fields without a care. My views on this "war" fall somewhere in the middle between you two. But Robbie, just because you may be smarter than I am about Afghanistan and better able to use English than German Psycho doesn't mean you're right in voting for McCain, which is what you'll be doing when you pull the lever for McKenney.

You must be young, so you can't really wrap your mind around what it's like to worry about McCain privatizing your Social Security (think Enron). You're probably healthy and can't really feel empathy for the 55 million Americans who can't afford health care, who let their kids walk around with cavaties in their teeth and ear infections, who get a second job to pay off jacked-up medical expenses. For you, voting is an intellectual exercise. It's a fact, barring something bizarre happening in the next two months, that "McKenney" is a simple keyboard shotcut to start up the McCain virus. It's simply immoral. You're educated and knowledgeable, but that doesn't mean you're logical. Spock and Data from Star Trek need to pay you a visit and slap you on the side of your head! Of maybe Spock should teach you how to do a mind meld with some of the people who will soon be dead or suffering if McCain gets to be your Commander in Chief.

I just wanted to make it clear to you and to everybody enjoying this conversation that if your third party candidate fails to build up a head of steam after a certain point in time, then it's time to abort that installation until later. A skilled user can use even flawed software to write better software! But you can't do shit if your software is a virus!

2008-08-19T02:09:00.000-07:00

McCain and Obama--Bad Software

Someone posting as "fluorescent" took strong exception to my train analogy, especially the part where I say:

“It is incredibly bourgeois, decadent, arrogant, and selfish to sacrifice the lives of literally millions of foreigners so you can make your little progressive or libertarian point at the ballot box!”

Fluorescent writes, "Wow how intellectually dishonest and scraping the bottom of the barrel of you. You not only imply that because i want to vote for Cynthia Mckinney i have blood on my hands but you also put it in red font?"

OK, "fluorescent" or Lord Farquaad, or whatever your name is, I can dig that you don't like my tone, but you seem to have missed the most important point of my essay. I think you honestly don't realize how simple and binary our present situation is. My words in "Stop the Train or Just Slow It Down?" are perfectly true, and as provable as a simple math equation.

Having worked for many years as a network administrator, I find myself often dealing with situations in life that seem exactly analogous to situations with computers. Right now America is like a computer with two crappy programs on it, and if you type in a certain password, the Obama program will run, and if you type in several other possible passwords, the McCain program will run. This is something I'm right about. It's as basic and absolute as hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete to restart your computer or typing your own password to access your credit card on line. It is immoral and stupid to let McCain drive a bus with our children aboard for even a minute! But if you type in the password "Nader," "Paul," "Barr," or "McKenney," or if you type in the password "McCain," it's a fact that this dangerous McCain software virus will run.

However, if you and all the other wavering progressives type in the password "Obama," it's highly likely that we will have someone at the wheel who hasn't yet murdered, someone who spoke out strongly and very clearly against the invasion of Iraq and tried to stop it. You sound like a very spoiled, self-absorbed individual who thinks her/his vote is so important and meaningful that she/he is actually going to type in the code that starts McCain. I wish it weren't that simple, but it is. We are dealing with a fucked up computer and two fucked up pieces of software, but that's what we've got to deal with right now.

I admitted that I think McKenney is the best (although in light of my train analogy, I'm scratching my head wondering about her motives, and I'm hoping she'll endorse Obama at the last minute). And I even hinted that of all the candidates, Jesus would probably choose McKenney. So I'm not putting her down. I'm just saying that her name is one of the passwords that will start up the McCain program.

If you really research Obama, he might turn out to be almost as slimy as McCain and Hillary, but at least he's competent to drive the bus. McCain and Hillary, by their support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, have already run over a bunch (a million!) of innocent pedestrians, so they're clearly not fit to drive!

"You remind me of someone you probably hate . . . Fox News," "Fluorescent" writes.

The difference between Fox News and myself is that they put out lies and propaganda, while I tell the simple truth. There may be some style similarities, however. I'd like to think that I'm fighting fire with fire.

2008-08-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

Stop the Train or Just Slow It Down?

I recently went to an impeach-Bush event at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland with my 9-year-old daughter Eileen, and I was immediately saddened to see that all the people there (including me and except for Eileen) had gray hair, and that less than half of the seats were filled. Eileen was privileged that night to see two of the most famous living American patriots, Daniel Ellsberg and Cindy Sheehan, speaking passionately and eloquently for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Before the speeches started, I got into an argument with a trim older gentleman over voting for Barack Obama vs. voting for Ralph Nader. His analogy was that we're all riding on a train headed for disaster, and that the Democrats look out the left window and want to head towards the sea, while the Republicans look out the right window and want to head towards the mountains. "But no matter who gets to drive," he said, "it's the same train on the same track, and there's a 'Bridge Out!' sign up ahead. It is time to stop selling our political souls, to stop voting for the 'best worst' [as Ralph Nader puts it]. It's time to vote for what we believe, for what is right!" And for him, the ONLY viable choice, if we are to have any hope of stopping the train and putting down new track, is independent candidate Ralph Nader.

I argued that the result of millions of us progressives voting our consciences for Nader in the 2000 election was that Gore got considerably less of the popular vote, and that had we voted for Gore, the two major crimes of the election, the theft of many thousands of black votes by computer database purges spearheaded by Jeb Bush in Florida and the treasonous appointment of Bush to the presidency by the Supreme Court, would have seemed more blatant and more criminal. I mentioned that for a few days, Nader had held the power to choose the next president of the United States. He could have given his votes to Gore at the last minute like Ross Perot gave his votes to Bill Clinton, and a million Iraqis who are now dead would almost certainly be alive, drinking tea, going to classes, watching TV, walking around right this minute. Bush "won" Florida by only 537 votes, I added.

I admitted that Obama is no great Savior and that he would probably continue making compromises and selling us out. But you must admit, I said, that Engineer Obama would slow the train down, relative to the speed it would continue going if John McCain became the next Engineer. Electing Obama would result in a substantial saving of human lives!

A substantial saving of human lives, maybe millions! I don't know what it is about most Americans that makes them so cavalier about the sacrifice of the lives of non-Americans, especially ones with brownish skin. I sometimes ask people how many DICPT's their car gets (Dead Iraqi Children Per Tank). When Americans, even some progressive ones, talk about casualties in other countries, they do it with the emotionality of someone mentioning ants killed at a picnic.

Further, I argued, since it's a given that most of the passengers on the train are very ignorant, and since it’s a given that the train is literally mowing down millions of Third World people every year as it rushes down the tracks, we can't afford to be so pure and self-righteous when we vote, when our "protest vote" results in horrible injuries and deaths for real people--both Third World people and American people--plus imposes a huge national debt on our own children and grandchildren, basically enslaving them by selling their future labor against their will!

After Obama is elected, I told him, it won't be the end of our political lives. That will be when things just start to get interesting. "If you and I continue to apply our activist energy," I said, "we can push Obama to do the right things to save our country, and if that fails, we can make sure that the next candidate will be even more progressive."

I sympathized with this man's strong urge to vote for Nader, whom he respects and admires. Cynthia McKenney is running for president now as well, as the Green Party candidate, and I think she is perfect for the job. But I wouldn't dare campaign or vote for her because the ignorance of the American people is a given, just like icebergs in the path of an ocean liner, and the ignorant are mentally disabled in such a way that they cannot see her merits. Therefore if she were to start to gain some traction, she would only take votes away from Barack Obama, the only candidate who, in the world as we presently find it, can defeat McCain in November.

It is incredibly bourgeois, decadent, arrogant, and selfish to sacrifice the lives of literally millions of foreigners so you can make your little progressive or libertarian point at the ballot box! As the despicable little Lord Farquaad says in the animated movie Shrek, "Many of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

McKenney doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell, or an Oreo's chance in milk, or whatever you say about radical black ladies. The same goes for Nader and Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, although they both have much to recommend them. The only way to stop McCain is to vote for Obama, and the only way Obama is going to win is if the people get behind him. If the election were held today, when you include vote stealing and polling-station-intimidation tactics, McCain would probably win.

I didn't mention this to the man at the impeachment event, but one weakness of my argument is that the ignorant, complacent, dim-witted passengers on the train, stirred to just enough awareness by a glimpse of the "Bridge Out!" sign to elect Obama as Engineer, would become complacent again soon after Obama took over the controls of the train and things started to get better. Then, once again, because of their ignorance, they would be susceptible to manipulation by the psychopaths who make money by extracting resources and wealth from Third World people as they mow them down, using the labor and battlefield sacrifices of brave Americans as lubrication for the gears of the train's engine. These selfish psychopaths vaguely realize that the end destination of the train is not good, but the trip to get there is set up perfectly for them to make a killing, pun intended. The title of a recent Noam Chomsky book sums up their attitude nicely: Hegemony or Survival. They have opted for temporary hegemony now instead of long-term survival into the future.

Anybody over 45 has seen this whole cycle play out before. Americans learned nothing from the Vietnam War, even though it had resulted in the needless, immoral, insane killing of 3 million Vietnamese, 1 million Cambodians, and 1 million Laotians, plus over 50,000 American soldiers. Actually, we did learn for a few minutes. After Nixon and Ford, we elected pro-environmental, relatively peaceful Jimmy Carter. But after Carter we relapsed into our intellectual coma and elected the first neocon, Reagan, followed by neocon foot soldiers Bush 1 and Bush 2, and doomed ourselves to repeat the Vietnam War. Now we've added another million deaths in Iraq to our list, and the murder of another 5,000 of our bravest citizens.

So, perhaps I'm arguing not so much for making things better forever as for pulsing them from bad to better and then back to bad again every decade or so! Perhaps voting for Nader, McKenney, or Barr, even if it does hasten World War 3*, is, looking at it from the God's-eye view, the best. Like I've heard many a Republican say, "Nuke 'em all and let God sort 'em out!" Maybe a global thermonuclear war wiping out most or all of humanity is better than a progressive century in which America regains its economic greatness and its reputation for being a beacon of freedom and the most innovative country in the history of humanity. Call me a chicken, but I don't think so!

Maybe we're just screwed, period, like the dinosaurs were.

But at leaast they have good strong liquor on this train, and since I'm riding in one of the nicer, higher cars, I can barely hear the crunching of children's bodies under the wheels or see them splatting against the windows.

It's a fact that most of the passengers on this American train put their hands over their ears whenever you try to talk sense to them, and like children, they loudly chant, "La, la, la, la, la!" until you stop talking. The moment you start reasoning with them again, they cover their ears and start jabbering. We also know from experience how much time it takes to teach even one of these imbeciles to start thinking independently and analytically. Slowing the train down is crucial, because it gives us more time. And time is clearly of the essence!

Ideally, the majority of our people would somehow see the rightness of voting for Nader, McKenney or even the fundamentalist Libertarian Barr (like Marxism and like many religions, Libertarianism would work if human nature were perfect). Then the murderous train could be stopped, new track laid down, and everybody would live happily ever after. The murder of Third World people by Americans would stop, and our treasury would no longer be raided to support a war machine that only enriches billionaires. No longer would our children be plucked off the train to serve in our military, to help clear the way for the billionaires' train to mow down more people and take their stuff.

But I doubt that even Jesus could convince the people to listen, change, and vote for McKenney, Nader, Barr, or the brave Congressman Dennis Kucinich. In order to impress generations of people who have grown up watching amazing special effects in the movies, his miracles would have to be far better this time around.

An announcer began introducing the night's speakers. Ellsberg and Sheehan were taking their places at a long table on the Grand Lake Theater's stage, and I had to end my conversation with the stubborn Nader supporter (pardon my redundancy--the word "stubborn" is not necessary when talking about Libertarians and Nader supporters). I told him, "Don't get me wrong, I do understand how you feel about voting for a man you don't even really believe in. I was ready to campaign full time for Obama, but now that he's bending so far to the right of center and contorting himself a la Gore and Kerry, it's hard for me to even lift a finger to help get him elected.

But I keep reminding myself that if McCain wins, the quality of my children's lives will almost certainly be diminished for the rest of their lives. Their very lifespans will likely be shortened, and possibly, if McCain gets World War 3 going, shortened down to a very few years! It is certain that McCain would continue to ravage our environment and waste our national treasure. Those are two of his campaign promises.

The speeches by Ellsberg, Sheehan, and others that night were truly great, but I doubt they'll ever show up in history books. As usual with progressive events, we were preaching to the choir. So I'm trying to spread their message where it's not yet being heard. I stand outside of supermarkets and register voters. I give away expensive Obama lawn signs and bumper stickers that I buy at the "Obama Store" on his Web site. And I write e-mails to hundreds of people on my list, providing powerful glimpses of truth via brilliant YouTube videos and short on-line articles by the likes of Naomi Klein, Katha Pollitt, and Robert Scheer. Every bit of buzz we can create through a simple conversation at work or with a prominently placed bumper sticker is worth it. People are very lost right now--there is a vacuum in their minds that needs to be filled--and if people start perceiving Obama as a happening, a lot of them will jump on the bandwagon and vote for him.

If we don't bring younger people into our political process, America is pretty much doomed. Looking across the audience at the Grand Lake Theater impeachment event, I couldn't help wondering who would take over once us graybeards and graymanes bite the dust. You don't need a degree in psychology to realize that McCain isn't going to activate young voters, except maybe to make them feel like smoking more pot or dropping more Ecstasy to blot out the whole mess.

Let me leave you with this thought, and forgive me for repeating myself: It is incredibly bourgeois and decadent to spend the lives of literally millions of foreigners so you can make your little progressive or libertarian point at the ballot box.

The Real McCain 1

The Real McCain 2

___________
*We might as well start using Arabic numerals instead of Roman numerals. People are going to have have trouble with the Roman numerals when we get up to World War IV, V, IX, etc.