Tag Archives: Culture

The think tank pretend thinkers

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Tim Robbins made a recent quip on Bill Maher, suggesting maybe “-if you fuck things up so badly, you can no longer be considered an expert.” I thought I’d call out the right-wing so-called experts, the traitorous anti-democratic unpatriotic lying think tank “scholars” for what they are: immoral and indefensible, opportunistic criminals, who by their damning credentials should be banned from public discourse until after long stints in prison.
 
THE INTELLECTUALLY-DISHONEST:
Heritage Foundation, (latest misdeed Africa)
Hudson Institute
Hoover Institute, (welcomes Rumsfeld)
Manhattan Institute, (welcomes Judith Miller)
Heartland Institute
Cato Institute
Rand Corporation
Brookings Institution
Progressive Policy Institute
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

THE ANTI-INTELLECTUALS:
American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
Center for Security Policy (CSP)
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)
Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
American Jewish Committee (AJC)
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
Council on Foreign Relations
Conservative Federalist Society
National Bureau of Economic Research
Center for the Study of American Business
Institute for International Economics
Competitive Enterprise Institute
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Progress and Freedom Foundation
National Center for Policy Analysis
Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy
Free Congress Research and Education Foundation
Citizens for a Sound Economy
Capital Research Center
Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
State Policy Network
Center for Strategic and International Studies
American Council of Trustees and Alumni
(more)

IN DISGUISE:
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Reason Foundation
Freedom Forum
Coalition for a Democratic Majority
Committee on the Present Danger
Committee for the Free World
Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC)
Foundation for Cultural Review
American Studies Center
Accuracy in Media
Center for Media and Public Affairs
Center for Science, Technology and Media
Media Research Center
Media Institute
Media Integrity Project
Institute for Justice (IJ)
Center for Individual Rights
Washington Legal Foundation
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD)
Institute on Religion and Public Life
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
(more)

IN PRINT:
The New Republic
Commentary (AJC)
National Review
The Public Interest
The National Interest
Weekly Standard
The New Criterion
The American Spectator
Public Opinion [not Public Opinion Quarterly] (AEI)
National Affairs
Washington Quarterly
Defense News
World Net Daily
“Radio America”
“Alan Keyes Show”
“Dateline Washington”
“Firing Line”
“Think Tank”
“Peggy Noonan on Values”
Washington Post
Wall Street Journal
New York Post

FUNDED BY:
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Carthage Foundation
Earhart Foundation
Charles G. Koch Foundation
David H. Koch Foundation
Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation
Phillip M. McKenna Foundation
JM Foundation
John M. Olin Foundation
Henry Salvatori Foundation
Sarah Scaife Foundation
Smith Richardson Foundation
Adolph Coors Foundation

I might as well mention the good guys, lest they get caught up with the similarly named miscreants. But why not stick to the experts in the Universities? Certainly higher education has become corrupted, but it should be easier to police, through peer review, than corporate funded experts who just hang up any old shingle and make appearances as scholars on the corporate funded media. For what it’s worth, the
ACTUAL PROGRESSIVES:
Economic Policy Institute
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Institute for Policy Studies
Worldwatch Institute
Center for Defense Information
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

Jewish fascists

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Masada2000 is a web site run by Jewish fascists living mainly here in the US. They hate Arab Muslims and they want you to hate them, too. More even more so, they hate Jews.

In short, these Jewish fascists are Jew haters. They hate Jews that are not fascists like themselves. They hate them more even than they hate Palestinians, whose property the Jewish Zionists stole.

Just like there are many in the US that want a Right Wing supposedly Christian state, there are many Jewish people that want a state for Jews first. They want a state that discriminates against others based on culture, race, and religion. That is fascism in short, since holding up one people as supposedly being superior and above all others is the basis for their nationalism. ‘Jewish’ nationalism wants walls between peoples just like ‘Christian’ nationalism does, too.

This group puts out a list of the Jews they hate the most. Check it out. They call these Jews DIRT In the opinion of Jewish fascists, other Jews that are rootless cosmopolitans are dirt.

US suppliers of prewar Iraqi WMDs

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Iraq was forced in 2002 to supply documentation of their weapons programs. They delivered a 12,000 page report to the UN Security Council, from which the US censored 8,000 pages. A Swiss reporter with Die Tageszeitung was able to obtain the missing pages which revealed who among US and European companies were responsible for building Saddam Hussein’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons programs. Parts of the UK press carried the story. Except for Democracy Now and an abridged mention in the AP, the story was buried in the US. Here is the list of 24 US companies (includes locals Hewlett-Packard).

Honeywell (rocket program, conventional weapons)
Spectra Physics (conventional weapons)
Semetex (rocket program)
TI Coating (nuclear weapon program, conventional weapons)
Unisys (nuclear weapon program, conventional weapons)
Sperry Corp. (rocket program, conventional weapons)
Tektronix (rocket program, nuclear weapon program)
Rockwell (conventional weapons)
Leybold Vacuum Systems (nuclear weapon program)
Finnigan-MAT-US (nuclear weapon program)
Hewlett-Packard (nuclear weapon program, rocket program, conventional weapons)
Dupont (nuclear weapon program)
Eastman Kodak (rocket program)
American Type Culture Collection (biological weapon program)
Alcolac International (chemical weapon program)
Consarc (nuclear weapon program)
Carl Zeiss – U.S (conventional weapons)
Cerberus (LTD) (nuclear weapon program)
Electronic Associates (rocket program)
International Computer Systems (nuclear weapon program, rocket program, conventional weapons)
Bechtel (conventional weapons)
EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (rocket program)
Canberra Industries Inc. (nuclear weapon program)
Axel Electronics Inc. (nuclear weapon program)

“In addition to these 24 companies home-based in the USA are 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US. Also designated as suppliers for Iraq’s arms programs are the US Ministries of Defense, Energy, Trade and Agriculture as well as the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.”

Day in court for police brutality

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The recent CS Independent update on the St Patrick’s Day Seven left the unfortunate impression that police brutality has become a less significant component of the events that day. In reality our lawyer wants his defendants to answer for our guiltless actions without demeaning ourselves making counter accusations of excessive force.

While the upcoming trial concerns only the specific accusation that we seven intended to obstruct the parade that day, in fact the actions of the accused were most certainly influenced by the repressive manner of the police. If our lawyer is unable to raise the issue of the unnecessary violence, the attempted humiliation, the illegal physical coercion and reckless injury at our trial this week, a remedy will most certainly require further legal action.

The CSPD learned nothing from their misdeeds at the 2003 anti-war protest. Now that people recognize my face from the parade incident, I find myself besieged by accounts of police brutalization of the city’s homeless and less fortunate.

If the Saint Patrick’s Day Seven are making too much fuss for your taste, please consider that it has less to do with our treatment suffered at the hands of the police. We stand for all Americans who expect their civil liberties to be respected, particularly those who may not have a parade audience in broad daylight to insure they will be treated with civility. Somehow we must impress upon the CSPD to adopt a culture of respect for the dignity of all the people it serves.

The ACLU has chosen to defend us because the police should not conduct themselves as if they have the license to curb free speech and inhibit the freedom to assemble. And certainly not by means of force.

The American dream is irresistible

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People ask me if Cuba’s so great, why do Cubans try to flee to America? For the same reason you’re here American Dreamer. Not an entirely informed decision.
 
Others recognize that to cast off tradition, culture, spirituality, and one’s geographic roots, in many cases extended family and the ancestral home, for the pretext of upward mobility in America, even if successful, is a tragic dead end. America, America, land of black sheep emigres, of the 700lb candy addict consuming Capitalism, dead branches on the family tree.
America the irresistible candy bar

Creepylocks and the three blondes

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Petit family as media would have you see them- Natalee, JonBenet, Nicole and STRAW DOGS emasculated husband Dustin Hoffman.
The spectacular triple-murder-rape invasion of the Petit family home in Cheshire Connecticut drew comparison to the brutality of the supersexed ruffians from A Clockwork Orange. Sam Peckinpaw’s Straw Dogs was released the same year, banned in the UK until only recently, and depicted the similar rapist bogeyman but focused on cultured man’s incapacity to safe-keep his house and blonde.

Failing as a protector is a timeless phobia which has driven such memorable protagonists as Braveheart, Rob Roy, Josey Wales, the Coward of the County, ad manipulatum. So well explored in fiction and fantasy, why must the media exploit those unlucky victims in real life?

We already know legions still vicariously work over the ritual assault of little JonBenet. Our whole populace displayed an embarrassingly unhealthy curiosity about the ease with which an unaccompanied young white girl could vanish in Aruba. And then there’s the slut fetish, aimed at Nicole Simpson, defiler of America’s Hertz sweetheart, given her due, where we got to stalk her sexual promiscuity and cut it quick. Those ugly national predilections are known. Why then parade the Petit cadavers through the grinder?

The Petit blondes were murdered, their house burned, the perpetrators apprehended. Already the story sows fear and drives firearm sales and home alarm upgrades. Why dwell further into the grim of their grisly deaths? Can we not resist hearing that mother and daughters were tied to beds, raped, etc, tormented, revisited, etc? The two joy-rapists are going to be celebrated in prison. Not only for despoiling the rich man’s white women, but for Goldielocks taste testing womanhood from a controlled sample: supple experience, freshly husked, and Media’s favorite fixation the forbidden fruit. And though the news pretends a hushed reverential tone, a voyeur America along for the ride.

J.K. Rowling and the Dead Zone

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With author J.K. Rowling declaring she’s written the last of the Harry Potter titles, there’s a panic coming from the publishing world that there will be nothing to take Harry’s place. I suppose this fear anticipates the readership’s sadness, it certainly expresses the commercial concern, but it cloaks itself in a [Scholastic] librarian’s voice: whatever now will the children find interest in reading?
 
Harry Potter has been around for ten years. Educators like to credit him for pulling children from the terminus of their gaming consoles. If Potter has created an upsurge in reading, I ask you, to where has it led? Ten years is enough to have nourished the new generation. Over 325 million Rowling books have been sold. The first Harry Potter readers are already graduated from college. What are they doing?

It’s a leading question, because I haven’t an answer. It’s not discernible. Blogs, Myspace, trivia-tourism, what? I’ll confer with college professors and get back to you, but it certainly isn’t the Peace Corps.

I would purport that the Scholastic [1] worship of Harry betrays a lack of faith in what it means to read. Do children need to be rewarded for reading? Is not escaping into the abstract a pleasure unto itself? I thought it was a fundamental need that even distinguishes us as human beings. Do we have to offer candy bars to induce people to eat? I’m sure humans can run themselves out of gas out of sheer distraction, but I know appetite is inherent.

A key is to educate children that there’s a world beyond theirs, an abstraction beyond their horizon, which can be explored through reading. Much of it, history, thought, imagination, lies only in books. Travel and science can lie beyond if they wish. Those subjects are taught in school, via reading. Teachers who suspect their students haven’t bought into reading are obviously not grading to challenging standards.

Through books lies an existence of infinite proportion, as n approaches the finite lifetime. Are the Potters hypothesizing that children must be coaxed into this world, without regard that it might be form over substance? Do children whose thumbs twitch for video games need to be lured by books that feel like video games which lead, like arcades and the pool halls before them, nowhere? With Harry Potter, are we creating readers or are we killing them off? Form has become the new substance, which to some sounds clever and new, but really means empty is the new full.

Dead Zone
There’s something happening outside the Mississippi Delta where man’s agricultural runoff, waste and industrial pollutants meet the sea. It’s being called a Dead Zone, which describes it literally, and it’s growing. The phenomena is a total collapse of the ecosystem leaving Hypoxia, the absence of oxygen in the water. It starts with the algae, then never mind every next link in the food chain [2]. We’ve measured it only since 20 years ago. Doubtless it started earlier. Doubtless too it’s happening exponentially in every estuary downstream of overpopulation. I read about Hypoxia overtaking Lake Victoria in Africa, rendering it a sinkhole, the social repercussions of which match Dante.

I cannot but wonder if such a consequence of pollution cannot manifest itself on the human population. Could not our minds become sink holes? Could not a culture or generation be faced with a Dead Zone?

Debilitating, not irreversible in the grand scheme, but certainly final, like stunted growth. Generations of minds shrunk below capacity, below what we might have wished for them, like fingers crippled by the early industrial age. A dead zone of thought, of initiative or motivation, of energy needed to get out of the dead zone. Why it’s called a dead zone, not merely an empty one.

Booksellers seem happy as snakes to see our children want sugar instead of oxygen.

Footnotes
1. The publishers of Harry Potter, Scholastic Press, is a commercial enterprise, not an educational concern as the name implies. It’s like the pseudo-junk food company Subway, owned their ads say, by Doctors Associates, Inc.
2. Overuse of synthetic fertilizers has been causing rising hypoxia on every coast. The excess nitrates lead to blooms of algae which pull all the oxygen from the water, knocking the breath from all other living things. So my analogy is closer than I intended.

The Doctor’s Plot revisited

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In 1953, Stalin launched his ‘defense’ against Jewish doctors he said were involved in a plot to kill him. Today, with Britain’s Labor Party now thoroughly discredited for being a poodle, barking alongside Bush always in support of the US occupation of Iraq, there comes another doctor’s plot.

A plot to show the world that TERROR is a really big deal to justify spending trillions of dollars on fighting against it. A plot led by a renegade religion! But this time it is the Muslims and not the Jews.

Jews are out (or is that in?) and Muslims are in (or is that out?) for ‘plots’ to be formed around. So we seem to have a Muslim doctors plot instead of Jewish doctors making headlines in the news. Go figure. There is another evil race, culture, and religion to justify wrapping oneself in the British and US flags with, like once Germans wrapped themselves in their flags under Hitler’s guidance. And like the Jewish doctors of the ’50s, these Muslim doctors of the present seem only capable of burning themselves alive with their nefarious manipulations. How convenient.

And what is it with airplanes and airports? Are we to believe that it is not our Homeland Security bureaucracy that has an obsession (to keep their cush ‘security’ jobs loafing around) with airports and flying, but Muslims? I don”t think so. They don;t have billions of dollars invested in running around in circles like our ‘security’ burrocrats and underlings do. They will attack in other ways than using airplanes to fly into buildings next time along.

I know some stupid doctors in this world, but to believe that Muslims docs are involved in running trucks filled with flammable liquids into airport areas is just too stupid to be believable. It is much more likely a ‘terror story’ to be spoon fed to stupid kids developed by cops. Don’t be a stupid kid, hear? The fetish for airports comes from ‘our’ side, not theirs. Green, Yellow, Red… it’s all baloney for the gullible. And the modern day version of the doctor’s plot is for the gullible, too. Tony Blair needs to be in jail, and his successor probably needs to follow him quite quick for this current campaign of fabricated bullshit. WOMD anybody?

The supposed Muslim doctors’ plot to kill us all seems to follow the same plot line that Stalin used to blame Jewish doctor’s for all the problems of the world, including a supposed effort to assassinate him. Paranoia, religous hatred, stupid us-first nationalism, and lots of lies make up the basic recipe for ‘doctors plots’. Oh, and today one must throw in a dash of airport, too.

How sick!

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For lack of a $5 round of antibiotics, a disease called Noma can do this to a kid… Photo of Noma infection Meanwhile, the US spends how much on killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan alone? And some want the US to go on to intervene to ‘Save Darfur’? How about just delivering these kids with this disease a round of Amoxicillin first? See Children Made Faceless

Wikipedia reports that 400,00 suffer from this disease in Africa alone. Also they mention that… ‘It is rarely treated since in some cultures it is considered taboo. Noma was endemic to the section of Auschwitz where the Nazis interned Gypsies.’

Actually, it’s more likely rarely treated due to nobody caring enough to fund the simple course of Amoxicillin needed to treat it. And the parents of these kids don’t have the money to buy the medication.

Mystical Machu Picchu

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peru-machu-picchu.jpgI’ve seen it in books, but it’s hard to describe how I felt when I actually saw it. Mists swirling around, emerald green grass, orchids overgrowing the Inka Trail, alpacas standing in our way. Mostly I felt a surreal connection to an ancient culture, sophisticated, brilliant, visionary and REAL. My friend and I stood there quietly for a long time, chewing our coca leaves, taking it all in. Our guide sat quietly as well. Sometimes words truly don’t suffice.
 
Click on the pic to see a bigger version.

War is always about betrayal

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A Culture of Atrocity by Chris Hedges talks about how occupation troops tend to psychologically drift from being a killing machine (fighting machine directed at the other soldiers of the ‘other side’) towards being a murder machine ( a group of soldiers that blames unarmed civilians for any harm that comes their way and then lashes out with atrocities). He mentions that when a society involves itself in supporting such an occupation force of its own troops, that it becomes a culture of atrocity.

Part of such culture is the constant betrayal of one’s own values, as society begins to break down into an ‘every for himself’ sort of mentality, both inside the military and in the larger society as a whole. The only antidote to that, is solidarity with others as opposed to abandonment of them.

It is hard to show solidarity, though, when one is running on fear much as the typical US soldier is as he works at occupying another society’s territory. Any solidarity then often seems like it is more risk filled than if one just acts as a hardliner and mows the seemingly dangerous person down. That’s why so many civilians go down in crossfire.

‘Save Darfur’ interventionists seem bloody ignorant about Africa, its culture, and its history- Save Lado, too, Comrades!

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Free Tibet, Stop Genocide in Kosovo, Liberate East Timor, and now Save Darfur with that ‘genocide’ tag being thrown around again. And lots of vitriol against Arabs and China mixed in. There seems to be all sorts of poorly thought out comments and ill considered positions going around town concerning this issue of ‘Darfur’, currently in the national spotlight ala Paris Hilton.

One local activist recently claimed on his web site that the Sudanese government was a US puppet state. Talk about getting it totally backwards! The reality is it’s the independence of the Sudanese government from DC control that Another activist here in the Springs was cheer-leading Democratic Party Colorado Governor Ritter for taking steps to firm up the US campaign beginning an economic war against Sudan. Colorado will not do bizness with bad Africans! Oh, Whoopee, Guvnor! I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you will do business helping your political buddies commit GENOCIDE against Palestinians and Iraqis, though. Am I right?

Right now, the Colorado Springs pro-peace people seem to be stumbling around in the dark on many fronts. The police attack on the St Patrick’s Day parade participants has them stumbling, and the anemia of the national Pro Peace folk hasn’t helped either. So why not jump on the ‘Save Darfur’ bandwagon? It makes sense. I guess there is just not enough problems on the home-front at this time? So let’s go save some Black folk from the evil Arabs and Chinese! And we’ll be led by Dubya, who will correct his problems in Iraq by changing a letter and nuking Iran.

The Justice and Peace had ourselves up a booth at Juneteenth today. They placed us right next to our old buddies, the storm troopers under the command of Police Chief Liars Myers. We’re getting to be almost family at this point. And on our nice little table we had some lit about Saving Darfur.

No, nobody had brought any material saying it might be nice saving all of Africa by getting the US the fuck out of their. I felt in a genteel mood and just sat for a while chitchatting and smelling the bbq. The Gazette was Heiled as being so very generous for poor Black folk by having ‘given generously’ with the publicity. It felt so good, so why be contentious? I just couldn’t…

I had my sign ‘Stop US War on Somalia’ with me, but Aw Shucks. Why confuse folk still trying to decide whether the Dar is for the Fur, or the Fur is for the Dar? And every body’s Albanian is still not much up to par And what’s the national language of island nation of East Timor anyway? Uh sorry, I meant the half island nation of East Timor. Hey, why shouldn’t we demand liberation and independence for West Timor, too? And what’s the next half-island down the shore? The world is complex, but you can speed read it if you are a liberal interventionist, for sure! I would have felt like a simpleton with my sign at the picnic.

There were some pamphlets to help you out on this with Darfur on our table. Did you know that Darfur was once an independent nation? Until the British defeated them of course.

Believe me, you will never learn this sort of stuff from the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd. They just don’t know it. That’s right. Darfur was pasted onto Sudan by the British. Those who paste on may want to peel the paste on back off, though. For humanitarian reasons, no doubt. From Blair to Brown to Save Darfur!

By the way, I am thinking of starting up a Colorado Springs society to save the Lado people. Don’t know about them? Hey, they’re just right down the road from Darfur. And guess what? They are victims of genocide, too. Save Lado! Is it pronounced like in Spanish, or like ‘lad oh!’ in English? It’s always fun when nobody can pronounce the name of the place we’re headed to ‘intervene’ into. Makes it more fun to watch the TV news!

I’m not making this up, so do the research on your own and let’s then get together and start a group (or 2 or 3) at Colorado College and get some sweet chickens (let me know if the use of ‘chickens’ here is not pc, like headless chickens) to help us out. What do you say? This is America, is it not? Anything can happen. We’re a good people for sure. So let’s do something for the Lado people right now! Start the propaganda, uh I meant ‘education’ going and we’ll get the troops in as soon as we can!

Meanwhile, let the conservatives increase the military budget a tad more, so that we’ll all then be ready to move into action together.

Save Lado!

Raul Castro’s daughter blasts homophobia

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I thought that this news item was of note, so here it is in full. Walter Lippmann’s website is worth visiting, too. See below… Tony

Raul Castro’s daughter blasts homophobia

Havana, May 21 (EFE).- The daughter of acting Cuban President Raul
Castro spoke out in favor of tolerance and against gay-bashing on the
occasion of the International Day against Homophobia.

“The communications media have a big responsibility in the education
of the public, in developing a culture of respect for people due to
their sexual identity and sexual orientation,” said Mariela Castro,
the head of the National Sex Education Center, in remarks broadcast
Sunday by state television.

Castro attended an unusual film-debate held in the “23 y 12” hall in
Havana, where organizers showed the U.S. film “Boys Don’t Cry,” which
tells a story based on real events of the difficulties,
discrimination and violence to which a young transsexual woman was
subjected.

“Starting with the advances we have had on these matters in our
country, it’s that we (are) trying to better visualize the goal of
this international – and in this case national – day,” said the
sexologist.

Castro said that “homophobia and transphobia still exist in the world
in a very strong, very cruel, very distriminatory way against
homosexual, transsexual and transgender people in a general sense
and, above all, as a result of ignorance.”

The government of Fidel Castro, who provisionally handed over power
to younger brother Raul last July after undergoing major surgery, has
in the past displayed marked intolerance for homosexuals, imprisoning
gays and quarantining AIDS sufferers.

The National Sex Education Center, a teaching, research and
assistance institution created in 1989, has proposed in the Cuban
legislature a bill to legally recognize the sex changes undergone by
transsexuals, at the same time it has been pushing for some time an
awareness campaign in the state-controlled media.

The International Day against Homophobia was begun on May 17, 2005, a
decade after the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from
its list of mental illnesses.

Thirteen years after its first showing in movie theaters on the
island, on May 5, Cubans watched the first broadcast on local
television of the 1993 film “Fresa y chocolate” (Strawberry and
Chocolate), an allegory against intolerance and discrimination
against homosexuals. Recently, Cuban TV also showed “La mujer de mi
hermano” (My Brother’s Wife), which also deals with the theme of
homosexuality. EFE

=============================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer – photographer – activist

Front Page


=============================

News from the Pope… again…

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I wonder if Bishop “vote republican or rot in hell” Sheridan is going to jump on this bandwagon, but the Pope has said that allowing Native Americans their own culture and religion would be a step backward, and made the preposterous claim that they were just “silently waiting and hoping for Christianity” to push them into the lowest levels of Latin American societies ooops I mean “liberate them from the slavery of having their own national identity” ooops again, I mean “from the slavery of their ignorance”

There hasn’t been much outcry from our Diocese about the fact that the Uber Rich buying up all the land bordering the National Forest and building an almost impenetrable fence of “No Trespassing-Private Property” to limit the Medicine People, including and especially Native Americans, from access to the Medicine Lands that were “given” to us by the Laramie Treaty and later reinforced by the Native American Religious Freedom Act of 1973.

Pretty fucking bad when we had to have an Act of Congress to affirm that the First Amendment provisions about Freedom of Religion actually applied to ALL citizens, even Native Americans.

But for the past few years the Army, at the behest of the Gated Community Rich Bitches like the ones at Cedar Heights (which is technically on Garden of the Gods treaty land) has been enforcing arbitrary rules which keep the people off the people’s land.

The rich folks have had the National Forest set aside as a publicly subsidized private playground for them and their snot-nosed brats.

Will world agriculture production collapse?

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World agriculture is facing some dire straits ahead. While most scientists have been concentrating their worries about the ability of agriculture to keep up with the growing population consumption needs for some time, they were often worrying most about the spreading scarcity of fresh water, growing desertification of the planet, increasing soil degradation, global warming, peak oil’s effects on fertilizer supplies, etc. They had not been worrying so much about the death of honey bees.

That has now changed, since these bees are necessary for pollination of flowering plants and the bees are disappearing. We need the bees not just for honey, which alone is a relatively minor item, but we need them most for pollination of crops.

There is a lesson to be learned here, and that is simply that consequences of destructive economic activities are often not foreseen in advance. People calculate one thing, but ‘God’, so to speak, calculates another. Nature is not a controlled laboratory in a university lab somewhere, where reductionist thinking can lead only to reductionist results. So it is deadly to just rely on only a micro-management style, ‘environmental impact statement’ sort of plotting of economic planning in the future. That is precisely what our corporate government and the corporations themselves will try to do, and they will call it GREEN to do so. In fact it is not and is a formula for mass human suicide instead.

Let’s hope that the bees can rally and come back next season? But even if they do, we are hardly out of crisis state in the least. We are just beginning to enter into it. The corporate sector alone is not in any way capable of delivering the type of planning of future economic activity that is needed to forestall disaster worldwide. Temporary profit making, which is what the corporate world is all about, can only be destructive to the world environment we all live in. There is not even a seed of real change that can be accomplished when this mindset dominates. A radical shift is totally necessary in how things are done and made.

Rush Limbaugh needs to get the can for Hate Speech, too

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Here is a video of Rush Limbaugh’s promotion of ‘black face’ in the wake of Imus’s getting his papers from his sponsors for his own racist hate speech. Barack the magic negro The timing was deliberate, too. It is Limbaugh’s defense of Hate Speech in general, of which he is one of the biggest practitioners of.

These hypocrites call for the firing of any even mildly liberal professor they can dig up, and then try to wrap themselves in the mantle of ‘Free Speech’ when it comes to themselves and their constant spreading of Hate Speech across the airways. But there is a big difference between the two types of speech. Let me give my own experience at an antiwar vigil yesterday to illustrate.

Yesterday me and another antiwar protester were practicing our right to Free Speech by appearing with signs at a busy intersection. They said ‘PEACE’ and ‘NO WAR’. Some hecklers who disagreed with our message started shouting ‘Bush, Bush, Bush’ from their cars. They, too, were practicing their right to Free Speech, but then it turned nasty.

It turned into an example of them practicing Hate Speech. These young and belligerent men parked their cars and started to menace us. One of them told me to ‘Suck his Dick’, as they threateningly seemed to be building up to a physical assault on us, even though hundreds of driver-byers would have been watching! They made it clear that they would have assaulted us physically, except for the fact that so many onlookers would have witnessing their attack if they did.

As they left, one of them who had worked himself up full of hatred for us, angrily backed his vehicle into the tall lamp post in the parking lot of the Fast Food ‘restaurant’ he was at. Comical and sad. That’s what practicing Hate Speech usually comes down to, but it does have the danger of potentially causing others deep harm, and usually in an effort to stop others from their right to exercise their Free Speech.

Let’s face it. Much of the work of people like Ann Coulter Imus and Rush Limbaugh is nothing more than the most flimsily camouflaged Hate Speech. It’s basically not much more than telling others to ‘suck their dicks’, and it’s usually directed at people of other races, other sexual orientation, and those from other cultures. Oh, and against others practicing their Free Speech to openly disagree with government policies.

It is not being against hate mongers’ Free Speech to demand of their sponsors that these practitioners of Hate Speech either clear up tehri acts and eliminate their Hate Speech routines, or just hit the road. There are plenty of ways to express one’s disagreement with ‘liberals’ than in using Hate Speech, so let the message be sent out that we are tired of this constant hate mongering on the airways.

Some like Rush Limbaugh and Imus will never engage in civil exercise of Free Speech, but rather will continue to principally engage in Hate Speech if continually allowed to. So let’s hope that Rush will get the can, too, like Imus did. That would be a big victory against Hate Speech, and a big victory in favor of Free Speech. Similarly, me and my fellow antiwar protesters of yesterday will continue to engage in our right to Free Speech, no matter how many middle fingers come our way along with the threats to possibly physically attack us.

We will meet soon with the city police to discuss how to keep them from physically attacking us for practicing Free Speech in this city. I don’t expect much, or anything for that matter. The police, just like the Bush Adminstration, are totally in favor of Hate Speech and totally incapable of defending the public’s right to engage in Free Speech. I’d have to see a miracle from God before I would ever think otherwise.

The New Colossus

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I met an otherwise conservative old gentleman yesterday with a refreshing answer to the immigration question. Said he: “I’d welcome them!”

“This nation was built on immigration, we’re all immigrants -except the Native Americans- and I believe there’s room for plenty more. There’s obviously work so let them come.”

That’s the kind of empathy I think is necessary before we can address the real problem of immigration: what is driving refugees to cross our borders?

If Iowans suddenly started flooding into Kansas, only the most self-centered xenophobe would conclude it was for Kansas’ superior character. The rest would wonder, what is happening in Iowa to drive all those people from their homes? What industry is destroying the farms and businesses leaving Iowans no choice but to move off? More than likely it would be the same culprits that are at work in Mexico.

Big Agra and the usual multinationals, aided by the traditional ruling elite, have been raping Mexico and Central America for years, forcing the populations to move north, not for greener pastures, but any pasture at all. Mexicans are not coming to America because they want to be Americans. They do not embrace American culture, even our language. They are a displaced people. Let’s welcome them into our system and together we can address what powers are at work which have stolen their homelands. The forces are multinational, but the tools are American. They are the World Bank and friends. Our government.

It wasn’t always thus. I chanced to look up Emma Lazarus’ poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty where there are more words than form the fabled phrase we know by heart. To me they reflect a grand ideal that today serves only to inflate the American sense of self-importance. Time to go back to school lest The New Colossus (Mother of Exiles) become like the old.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Holocaust Remembrance Day

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Today is a day chosen by the Jewish government of Israel in the ’50s as a day for remembrance of the millions of Jews who died in Europe during World War Two. The date was chosen because it corresponds to the day the Warsaw Ghetto uprising began, one of the most heroic efforts of resistance to tyranny in the history of all mankind.

The horror of the holocaust against the Jewish community occurred over 60 years ago, but humankind should never forget the victims. They were victims of the apathy of US and non fascist Europe, as well as the fascist movement itself. A horrrible attempt was made to totally eliminate Jewish culture and the Jewish people themselves, and the whole world lost out as well. We now all suffer from the lack of having the Jewish culture of that era still with us today.

May the Jewish victims rest in peace and let us move to stop yet more future Holocausts from occurring again, whether it be against the Jewish community or any other community as well.

An effort to lighten up and artistically improve this site

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We don’t get enough Arab culture here in Colorado Springs in my opnion, so in an effort to lighten up and improve this site I am linking to youtube once again. I hope that all of Not My Tribe’s large viewing public will be able to enjoy this brief concert!
The opening act is by the beautiful and very talented Amar Kamel! She really gets going towards the end…. and she can really shake her booty!

And for the ladies, and all those that might have been less than totally satisfied with the opening act, check out Asi Haskal! He is guaranteed to not disappoint. Be sure to stay for the whole show, Ladies!

Medicine for profit is a world disaster in march

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Medicine for profit is a march down a blind alley and the reason why is quite simple to understand. ‘Care’ for an individual for an individual fee, is the ultimate non-holistic approach possible since health is so absolutely connected to the environment that people live in.

To treat the individual in an effective manner, doctors have to also treat the environment as well. But just go and try telling this to your average numbskull private-profit doc that the American medical schools turn out so in mass. These think-they-know-it-all degreed idiots are sure they know what’s best for you, but the medical machine they are part of never does jack shit to treat the environmental conditions that make people sick. Logically and scientifically it makes no sense. But that is medicine for profit for you, is it not?

Take as just one tiny example, the cathedrals where many of these doctors often practice in; the hospitals. The doctors often stroll in with their coats and ties on, while the patients and medical worker peons that the doctor boss around are most often passing their days in areas more nasty than your home toilet area. Most of these doctors are cynical bastards that almost entirely identify with the corporate structure they have melded and immersed themselves into. They say they care about the patients they take in for a fee, but the ‘care’ most often stops when the bucks stop. Or it never begins in the first place.

Don’t believe me? Then try going into an average doctors office without medical insurance cards in hand. What’s the first thing one gets asked when they show up half dead into the ER? It is always, ‘What’s your coverage?’ And if you got none, you most often will get sent packing. ‘Dumped’ is the word now used, and that’s not exactly treating the patients holistically. Not at all.

Truth is, the medical doctors are not allowed (nor allow themselves to even contemplate) to treat the environment. That is seen as the terrain of the corporations and their government alone. The average American doctor concedes that area without even a bleat of protest. But why? Public Health is certainly important in the treatment of disease, isn’t it?

Why treat the farm worker, say, after his exposure to deadly pesticides? Why not treat the environment to prevent the disease, Doc? No money in it for you? Why not treat the lack of food, the lack of clean drinking water, the lack of a decent living space, the lack of a decent wage, instead of just treating the now already sickened individual who comes to you with insurance card in hand, Doctor? Too scared to fight disease? Too bought off by the hundreds of thousands you are often making?

You are a fraud, corporate medicine and corporate model doctors. You turn all of us in your medical factories into dehumanized entities with only titles and employee numbers in hand, and not even our own humanity which you strip away from us bit by bit, same as you strip away the sick and elderly folk’s dignity. You turn us all into an Evil Empire that churns out your profits, and destroys people’s health. You destroy the environment same as your corporate cousins in agriculture, mining, and military goods production do, alsdo.

You are strip mining world health, not bettering it, all to make bucks. And the US doctors are all aboard this gigantic con game on society, hiding behind a facade of being all high tech and scientific. Instead, you business doctors are as nasty as an MRSA sore, a Vancomycin resistant diarrhea, a brain dead corpse in the ICU, a multi drug resistant TB, and all the other products of made by your corporate medical model and your human devolution as system into monster. All you hold now to bedazzle the crowd with, is some sort of future tech fix that is the pie in the sky you always promise. Meanwhile, you turn our environment into cesspool. You are turning all of us into ‘medical waste’, Corporate Doc.

Capitalism- the culture of disrespect to the individual

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One of the most comical aspects of those who defend capitalism, is their idiotic notion that anti-capitalists hate the rights of the individual, while capitalism is supposedly supportive of the dignity of the individual. How patently absurd!

Capitalism is an inherently authoritarian system where most of us get reduced down to a payroll number or code. And if you get sick, see what I mean exactly. Instead of having a name you will then have a patient ID number. Fall in, Number Not #1. Check the wrist band. Follow doctor’s orders, please. At work, do as you are told. We need you to work Tues. night shift, Number Whatever. Be on call on Thursday. Hold up you wrist , Patient #9.

All of our society works to dehumanize the individual. Many identify with this and if you try to assert your dignity as a human being, many other human beings will resent you for it, since they themselves have totally internalized their assigned lack of dignity as individuals under capitalism. How dare you do otherwise?! Who do you think you are?

Children at school, or elderly in the nursing home? Get used to musical chairs, musical beds. Take the Colorado Sap Test and be good. Chew your mush, I got no time. And to think that this is labelled the culture that frees the individual within each and everyone of us? Bizarro World thinking that our society is the epitome of freedom!

Capitalism enhances indiviualism they say! And then they talk of ‘collateral damage’. What a disrespectful to the individual and baldfacel lie. What nonsense. What a pile of total crap. Repeat it a billion times over, and perhaps you might buy it? Without the capitalist you have no freedom, and you have no dignity they chant like mantra. Of course, we all feel the absolute contrary. We see the lack of dignity given people daily in our lives. Capitalism tries to squash the dignity of people at every step. Only money is allowed to buy it. The dollar rules over the people everywhere. And yet they repeat otherwise.

I guess I am writing about this because today I saw the brute force of the police state against the dignity of the elderly. What is there much to say, when you see the police throw elderly, with physical handicaps, to the ground? I had a handicapped parking space permit in my car, while the police were assaulting the person who needed it, my friend and passenger in my car. Such utter and complete disrespect to the dignity of the individual, as they tore off this friend’s clothing by dragging her across the pavement without a thought in the world to the dignity they hoped to destroy. And to think that most in our society cling on to the fantasy, that only through supporting an authoritarian economic system can the individual be protected? What fools our delusions can make us. What cold blooded killers to dignity some become. I hate this culture of disrespect. The capitalist and his portfolio are the antihesis to human freedom.

Allgone

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Colonel Brian Allgood, West Point grad, army surgeon, Doctor Allgood, died last weekend in a helicopter crash, among a dozen unlucky American soldiers being transported across Baghdad. By all accounts he was an exemplary soldier.
 
Rest in peace. But why should he get peace, and not everybody?

Allgood worked for the Department of Defense whose chief function has been to kill people. As a doctor, Allgood’s particular role was to save people from dying, mainly of course those on our side. Allgood was a surgeon who healed battle injuries, reconditioning combat soldiers, as opposed to a doctor who ensured that subjects of interrogation did not succumb to their torturers before they fulfilled their intelligence potential. Without painting too dark a picture, we should be frank about the Hippocratic Oath in the military.

So let’s suppose for the sake of argument that Allgood’s proper name meant exactly what it said. Let’s say he wasn’t a sadist on a USDD Approved power trip, or a moral dimwit loosed on the sanctioned lawlessness of a battlefield, venting his anger with his sidearm, authorizing gunfire over video monitors, or ordering the destruction of communities for the sake of protecting US ambulance routes; say Allgood wasn’t a blind proponent of US imperialist superiority; say he wasn’t an Eichmann cog enabling the massive machinery of our military to grind its way through the bones of peoples and cultures; say he wasn’t an idealogue of convenience holding out for his honorable discharge, fearing a court-martial for disobeying orders, thinking about his family and his pension.

Say Mr. Allgood was an all-American do-gooder think-gooder. How much can that matter? Isn’t it time he would be the last?

Isn’t it time our soldier-citizens there in Iraq admit to themselves what they are seeing? Soldiers cannot blame a complicit media for keeping them from the darkness of their deeds. When can we expect these gun-ho idealists to figure out that shooting Iraqis is not the way to help them?

Allgood is dead -I wouldn’t be writing about him but for his name. Allgood was killed with a dozen maybe just as red-white-and-true soldiers. And this Blackhawk Down should take with it our national dellusion. Even America’s best are going to be pulled into the buzz-saw. Is this not the face of what will be America’s heavy price: Our innocence shattered, the same that we’ve done to the Iraqis as they look upon the senseless loss? The sacrifice of Allgoods of our own will join the sides of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocents.

America’s rolling invasion of Somalia

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The US invasion and occupation of Somalia is like that of Haiti, nobody is paying much attention. And like the current occupation of Haiti, it ‘rolls’. What do I mean by describing this as a ‘rolling invasion’, for it is a term I think that describes the now prototypical US intervention into the affairs of other nations? Lebanon, too, is being violated by an American rolling invasion as yet another example. So let’s take a quick look at Somalia then, to get a glimpse of the US strategy everywhere for its misnamed ‘war on terrorism’.

In Somalia, the US first arranged an invasion of that country using Ethiopian troops. Then it followed by bombing the country from US ships. Just several weeks after the initial assault using another country’s military, that of Ethiopia, the US is switching them out, and moving a contingent of another country’s military in, 1,500 Kenyans troops. In turn, the US is pressuring Uganda, Rwanda, and South Africa amongst other countries, to follow. And without any interest at home what-so-ever, the US bombed Somalia once again just yesterday!

Imagine how the Somalians feel? As a Muslim country they finally get some semblance of government after 15 years of chaos, but then the US returns once again to topple the cart yet one more time. The US sponsored troops? Thousands of Christian Ethiopians! And to follow up this humiliation using a traditional enemy of one nation, the US brings in yet a second nation’s troops. See the roll? Like rolling waves of a heavy surf on the beach. This will then be followed by an eclectic assortment of other nations, none of which have anything in common with the natives, except for their racial coloring perhaps. And that of being sponsored by George W. Bush!

We could go to Iraq or Afghanistan to see the same nonsensical outsourcing of imperialism once again. But let’s look at Lebanon first. US invasion launched using Israeli troops first. Less than successful, so the Jewish forces pull partially back out. The US then has an unwanted UN move into the country as so-called ‘peacekeepers’. The US then threatens Hezbollah. The US then has France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, and others to cajole the country with being given possible funds to rebuild itself some. The US threatens Syria and Iran. What will Bush roll in with next? US troops? Or maybe Polish troops? Don’t joke, they are already in Iraq and Afghanistan in large numbers. How about Japanese? Don’t joke, they are in Iraq! At the end of 2006, Yugoslavia had its area of Kosovo occupied by troops from 30 nations! Talk about a Tower of Babel!

OK, enough of Lebanon. More rolling imperialism, the grand daddy of idiotic imperialism, Haiti! US invades, deposes the legitimate president, and then partially removes itself, bringing in Canadians (some speak French) and Brazilians (many are Black)! Haitians in the streets improve their language skills in French and Portuguese. But wait! Troops arrive on behalf of Dubya from China, Chile, Argentina, France,Nepal, Jordan, Peru, Sri Lanka!, and Guatemala! (80 of them). I especially think the Haitians are impressed with Sri Lanka and Guatemala coming to visit. Those 2 militaries have such great reputations! And Haitians love a circus!

Isn’t all this rolling imperialism reminiscent of the Romans? They would send in all sorts of barbarians from one end of the Empire into the next. Can we even begin to imagine our own reaction if we were ever to be disrespected with such occupations and warmaking against us, as the US uses against so many others? Imagine if the former Soviet Union had won the Cold Ware, and followed it by occupying our country with troops speaking 20 different languages, 30 different cultures, etc.? That certainly would have gotten us into an enduring peace, for sure! lol.

Where will the US invasion of Somalia roll off to? What new group of heathens to trample on? Will any American ever really give a damn about these smaller societies that get run roughshod over by their government? Liberals are too busy trying ot get the US to send troops to Chad and Darfur to notice much where the troops are actually at. Some have yet to figure out that there is a war going on in Afghanistan, for example. Though it is encouraging to see that the latest poll finally finds over 1/2 of Americans are for withdrawal from that country at last. No thanks to the Democratic Party, I might add. Afghanistan is a dirty word for them to mention.

These rolling invasions create nothing but chaos and misery.

Rand McNally’s mapped stupidities

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I have one of those big map atlases that Rand McNally puts out each year, and have begun to use it some to home school my kid in geography. Since the District 11 school she attends is so busy constantly testing kids about the 3 Rs, they don’t seem to have time to teach geography, history, science, nor much really about anything. As it is, if I don’t teach her where Kansas is, she’ll probably be graduating down the road, with the herd of American kids that will be unable to locate their asses from a hole in the ground.

What gets me about Rand McNally is the, shall we say, subtle racism they practice. Where the fuck is Mexico, you idiots? It’s not like Mexicans and Americans don’t drive in each other’s countries. So what happened here? Let’s see? there are detailed maps of Canada’s provinces on 12 pages, plus semi-detailed maps of most of the big cities of that country. But Tijuana? Where is it? Where are the major Mexican cities, the Mexican states? Why might they not be shown? Instead, there is one page with a poorly detailed map of the country of Mexico as a whole. The idea here is a racist one. It is that Mexico is unimportant, and just does not rate being mapped by such a prestigious outfit as Rand McNally. Oh brother. And what idiots!

I wouldn’t mention this map thing, except that it seems so prototypical of the American racist mindset of the world. Dear Mr. McNally Inc., how many Mexicans do you think are in the US as compared to Canadians? When they drive back and forth from the US to Mexico, and Mexico to the US, don’t you think it would be nice of your ‘service’ to provide folks with directions? After all, that is the service your business supposedly is engaged in. Canada gets mapped, so why not Mexico?

Why not provide Texans, for example, with detailed maps of the North of Mexico? It would be nice to have city maps of Monterrey/ Saltillo, Guadalajara, and the DF. And certainly if Newfoundland can get its own detailed provincial mapping, then why not Nuevo Leon, Baja California, Chihuahua, etc.? And why not, other than the racism involved?

This is not just an unthought about error neither. The passage between Tijuana and San Diego is perhaps the busiest international crossing in the world. So why leave a blank space on that map for where Tijuana should be? Duh… Rand McNally is clearly a business that is ready to shoot itself in the foot by totally ignoring Hispanic buyers of their product. Racism seems to be more important to keep intact, than sales of their product or integrity of the service they provide. There are far more people traveling between Mexico and The US, than between the US and Canada, yet Canada gets mapped in detail, while Mexico gets only the barest of outlines of a national map.

The lesson here for my kid, is that neither her Colorado public school nor our big American Rand Mcnally book of maps will educate her well about geography, nor about other cultures. That, she will have to pick up on her own with my help, or she won’t learn much about these things at all. Why? It is simply that we live in a culture that prizes ignorance and stupidity much more than education. America the Free has become America We don’t know Our Asses from a Hole in the Ground. Keep fighting the rot. That’s all we can do.

Lampwick and the original Lost Boys

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Trouble my friends right here in River CityWas Lampwick the archetypical dilettante? You know, dapper, cultured, erudite, jaded, amusing, but nihilist? The boys in Pinocchio who cut school to smoke, drink and play pool were turned into donkeys in the Land of Boobies. Sound like a fitting analogy for an effete lounge-oisie? Internet blogs can amuse us with cynical antics, they often feel to me like small plexiglass window-seats looking on protracted personal train wrecks in upholstered stalls.
 
I got quite preachy a day ago in a local salon maudit, a favorite site I should also say. I’ll reprint my lecture here because the question I asked in earnest, albeit tucked inside some name-calling, remains unanswered.

This discussion has illuminated for me the challenge of how to activate the hands in pockets crowd. You make light of self-righteous do-gooders who take themselves too seriously. I do wish my indignation was less serious. It’s not that left-leaners have arbitrary spiritual beliefs which are being offended, it’s that our common sense of humanity is being trivialized. Bankrupted farmers, child slaves, indentured laborers, you tire of hearing about such horrors, but still you drink your Starbucks, buy your chocolate, and plug into your iPods with a yawn. What tone do you expect from activists beside scolding?

I ask that question seriously. What tone would cause you to say to Coca Cola: we’re not going to tolerate you killing Columbian union leaders or stealing India’s water? If consumers don’t withhold their consent, they are as guilty as Coke. I’m sorry fun-lovers but life comes with responsibility. Your pursuit of happiness may have to wait a bit, the rest of mankind begs your assistance.

The social justice movement isn’t about enlivening your water-cooler conversation, it’s about prompting change. We’re trying to organize a bucket brigade to help our neighbors stuck in a fire. And we have to stop those among us who are starting those fires. If you are standing idle, making light of the message we are trying to spread as quickly as possible, in chorus with the establishment voices already demeaning us, I’d just as soon walk over you.

Quite seriously, what would light a fire under your gay asses?