By Jennifer Lawson Zepeda

I kept saying it!  That the torture the U.S. sanctioned against people held in Guantanamo Bay would come back to haunt us.  And it finally has!

Thank GOD, there are still ethical people left in this world!

“In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were yesterday (Fri) found guilty of war crimes.”

“The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“They included testimony from British man Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi who was tortured in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.”

“At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.”

(Source: Bush Convicted of War Crimes)

It had to happen!  Torture is something that the U.S. has customarily taken a strong stance against; so to use it as an effective method of eliciting information?  Deplorable!

But the huge question is, What happens now?

“Full transcripts of the charges, witness statements and other relevant material will now be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.”

“The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission is also asking that the names of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo, Bybee, Addington and Haynes be entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals for public record.”

(Source: Bush Convicted of War Crimes)

Obama Where are You

That’s a start; but what about the International Criminal Tribunal demanding warrants for their arrest?  Shouldn’t that follow?

So, my next question is this…

Why isn’t President Obama putting on his big boy pants and demanding their arrest?  After all, the U.S. has been BIG on hunting down other war criminals and ensuring they were prosecuted; so, why not now?

WASHINGTON, April 26, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A UN-backed tribunal Thursday convicted former Liberian president Charles Taylor of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity – the first time a head of state has been convicted by an international court since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) worked closely with successive prosecutors at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in making today’s breakthrough possible. Leahy, as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on the State Department and Foreign Operations, wrote U.S. laws to withhold aid to any government that harbored Taylor, to increase the reward for Taylor’s capture, and to provide crucial funding for the court, even when it was not requested by an earlier administration. Leahy has long led as well in seeking justice for war criminals and in securing resources to help their victims. The court found that Taylor also personally profited from his crimes, receiving “blood diamonds” during the conflicts involving Liberia and Sierra Leone. Leahy heralded the roles of former Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), joined by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and others, who led efforts in Congress to stigmatize the role of that illicit diamond trade, which paved the way for the Kimberley Process, a joint effort by governments, industry and civil society to stem the role of diamonds in conflict zones.

(Source:  Leahy: Taylor Conviction Shows That The World Can Hunt Down War Criminals And Bring Them To Justice)

Where is Sen. Patrick Leahy on this?  Where’s the UN-backed forces, working to arrest G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld et al?

Why aren’t people like the self admitted torturer, ‘Hard Measures‘ author and former CIA official, Jose Rodriguez also declared as war criminals?  We’ve allowed him to profit off of his campaign of torture by publishing a book?

In the Bernie Farber’s blog, War Criminals — At Any Age — Should Be Punished, he admits that the common assumption is that war criminals evade prosecution because of many excuses.  One that remains is that many believe that given the age of the perpetrators and that the murderous brutalities occurred more than 65 years ago, we best just move on.

So, will we adopt this attitude towards our own war criminals of Bush et al?

If so, shame on us for being also the worlds biggest hypocrites!

By: Jennifer Lawson-Zepeda

You hear it all of the time. “We ARE the ninety-nine percent!” At least in Los Angeles you do. It’s written all over billboards, scrawled on walls, depicted on stickers stuck to lamp posts. It’s everywhere! But has anyone figured out exactly who qualifies as the 99%?

Define 99%

Most people who back the Occupy Movement seem to have a grasp of who the 99% are and what that means; but in case some are confused, let’s go over this.

99% of the Occupy Movement gets it. They know we are all in this together and as a movement they are, for the most part, a very peaceful movement.

The rock behind this movement lies in the stories of people. The stories of struggling as 1% of society uses policy to enrich themselves, avoid paying their fair share of taxes, dictate civil and human rights, and practices corrupt banking and business practices to bilk the rest of us.

Its stories like:

“I am 20K in debt and am paying out of pocket for my current tuition while I start paying back loans with two part time jobs.”

“I am a 28 year old female with debt that had to give up her apartment + pet because I have no money and I owe over $30,000.”

“Married mother of 3. Lost my job in 2009. My family lost our health insurance, our savings, our home, and our good credit. After 16 months, I found a job — with a 90 mile commute and a 25 percent pay cut. After gas, tolls, daycare, and the cost of health insurance, I was paying so my kids had access to health care.”

I am young. I am educated and hard working. I am not able to pay my bills. I am afraid of what the future holds.”

“I am a 19 year old student with 18 credit hours and 2 part time jobs. I am over 4000 dollars in debt but my paychecks are just enough to get me to school and back. next year my plan was to attend a 4 year college and get my bfa, but now I am afraid that without a co-signer I will have no shot at a loan and even if I can get a loan I am afraid that I will leave college with no future and a crippling debt.”

“I went to graduate school believing that there might be some financial security afforded by a higher degree, and that with that security I could finally buy my mom her own house and take care of her. Instead, I have wasted six years of my life.”

“I am a 27 year old with a bachelor degree. I ran out of my student loans while trying to find a job. I am ‘living’ with my mother again to get back on my feet. So far, the best I can do is a part time retail job paying $8 an hour. I am hearing impaired with cochlear implant. My cochlear implant warranty expired. I do not have the money to renew it. How can I work at my new minimum wage job when my implant is broken? I need it to HEAR.”

(Source: Who are the 99 percent?

So, does this include workers in all jobs? For instance, are the police officers of this nation part of the 99% too?


Police Brutality

Let’s examine police behavior. It’s a shame that so many officers in cities like Los Angeles condone illegal violent and excessive force against citizens. Because this creates a feeling of disgust among the very people they need to back them up when they are attempting to defend these people during crowd control.

But in many cities, police forces have well-earned reputations for using their authority inappropriately.

I know this for a fact, because of my dealings with the Long Beach Police Department and one of its officers who used excessive force on me in 2009.

No matter how many bruises I had; or, how many photos they took while investigating the attack on me by one of their “finest;” in the end the LBPD investigated themselves and determined that beating the crap out of a 55-year old woman trying to get on the ground after being ordered to do so, was justifiable. Even though a camera showed I complied with the officer’s command, the police officer created a story, a lie, a bunch of b.s. that he had reason to leave bruises up and down my arms and legs, breaking my finger and toenails by leaping on me and sending me crashing to the pavement. Even though at 55 I was not so nimble, I was trying my best to get on the ground in my not-so-limber way.

And in spite of the fact that they dropped the charges against me when they realized how ridiculous they were and that they had arrested a member of the neighborhood watch committee — a woman who had no arrest record in a lifetime of over fifty years, and who had film evidence that the cop was lying, they still found the abusive jerk innocent for abusing me.

During my incident, I had a female jailer named Hernandez at the Long Beach Jail tell me should would “fuck me up if I didn’t shut up” when I asked a simple question. Yeah…SHE was a real class act, like so many there. I was threatened many times during that weekend I was held. Why? Because I was pressing excessive force charges against an officer. I was even told I’d “never make my way to court,” by some of the most gutless minority jailers there, who used their authority and the power of many against one to try to intimidate me.

Certainly, the case of Perry Grays, who was brutalized by Long Beach police on Super Bowl Sunday 2011, duplicates a bit of what I went through. I wasn’t tased; but the elements of this case and mine are similar. In the following interview, Mr. Grays tells a familiar story to many arrested needlessly in places like Long Beach:

“Can I get your badge number,” and he says, “No, I’m not giving you anything,” and I said, “Isn’t it illegal to deny me your badge number?” and he says, “I’m not giving you anything.”
So then his partner asked, “What is your name?” and I said, “Sir, I didn’t come down here to give you my name, I came down here to get your partner’s badge number and he’s being unprofessional.” So he asks my friend what’s his name and my friend says, “Sir I don’t even live here”. So the officer who hit my window with the flashlight pulls out his taser and I said, “Okay, are you going to tase me?” He says, “Are you going to give me a reason to?” I said, “No, I didn’t say that, you’re putting words in my mouth” and he says, “Well you’re putting words in my mouth”.

I know the following paragraph is identical! I was arrested for resisting arrest and being drunk in public, no matter that I was behind a gate in my own yard and had barely taken a sip of a Mojito while barbecuing with friends, when the incident happened. Fortunately, a camera recorded the entire event and proved my point. But this man’s experience mirrors mine in many ways:

And they charged me with threatening a police officer, resisting arrest, and having a loud party. They released me after two days. I guess the charges were dropped because after their investigation they couldn’t prove any of those things, so they let me go.

So I understand very well that there are cops out there who should be held accountable for using excessive force. I’ve heard the stories of inmates in Los Angeles County Jail being told to, “turn and face the wall and don’t look, or they would get some too” as a team of jailers beat the crap out of some guy arrested for something like fighting a police officer.

Mayday Incident

But what I’m asking is, do police qualify as the 99% too? If so, then how do we include them in the 99%? And if so, how does this happen?

Los Angeles police arrested a man they say hit a female officer on the head with a snare drum during May Day protests.

He walked behind the policewoman on a skirmish line and out of the blue, struck her in the back of the head with a drum, nearly knocking off her helmet. She was treated for a minor concussion.

Police say 6’1″ 280 pound Brian Mendoza of Los Angeles was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of assault on a peace officer who stood about 5’1″ and weighed about 100 pounds. He remains jailed Thursday without bail.

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/05/03/state/n105547D24.DTL#ixzz1tzrHwHzD)

Look, I don’t believe in all of the rash of security officers that have been hired by Homeland Security to protect us against ourselves:

• I don’t believe the hype about warnings of terrorist      plots happening potentially in every government building.
• I certainly don’t believe in the new laws stating that      saying something intimidating now amounts to a terrorist threat.
• I think this country has gone WAYYYY overboard on the      police state.

And if anyone has a reason to hate police, then, it would be me after dealing with the corruption of San Diego’s Homeland Security agents at the border and in Correction Corporation of America’s Immigration Detention Center in Otay and the Long Beach Police Department. I saw firsthand how unscrupulous people can be during my dealings with them.

But part of me also wonders if in placing this, me-against-them attitude against police simply maintaining crowd control at an event like the Mayday demonstrations isn’t taking this 99% thing to an extreme.

Why do we need to brutalize a person who is simply doing their job? Are we claiming after the L.A. riots 20 years ago that we don’t need police? If so, I disagree. And as a person who was a victim of police brutality, I’ll also be the first to admit that I believe there are good police officers out there. They are family men and women and they work hard. To me, they deserve respect, just like any other hard working employee.

After all, don’t these people worry about their mortgages too? Don’t police officers have kids struggling to attend school? What financial stories can they tell that might classify them as part of the 99% too?

And realizing this, why do we allow protesters to assault the police when they aren’t doing anything but maintaining crowd control.

I will be the first to admit that I have a hard time stomaching police when they overstep their boundaries. Simply, I think it takes a great deal more strength to be a cop who respects their community, than a spineless wimp who abuses it.

And I won’t lie and say that when I hear stories (like yesterday) of ICE agents being murdered by anyone, including their own sons, that I have much compassion. I don’t.

Simply, after knowing how corrupt they are and how so many of them treat others, I can’t affect a caring attitude about something horrible happening to them.

• I know what pain and human rights violations they      inflict on others.
• I know that Homeland Security refuses to hold them      accountable.
• I have no respect for them for that reason.
• And until we demand that Homeland Security investigate      these abuses, I will continue to feel that way.

But with all of that said, I still view them as part of the 99%. Not the part I want to associate with; but part of the problems we all suffer. And because of that, as much as I hate them, I don’t feel they should be needlessly assaulted during protests. I would hope others would agree.

By: Bill Purkayastha

You’ll find them on the streets of just about every Indian town: dusty signboards, the paint beginning to flake off the battered aluminum sheets, proclaiming So-and-So English Coaching Class or English Academy, where one can learn “good spoken English for your bright career.”

But isn’t this redundant? Wasn’t the Indian subcontinent a British colony for close to two hundred years, whether that was under the East India Company or the Crown? Since the modern Indian educational system is a creation of the British, shouldn’t English be already taught everyone in schools as a matter of course? Then why should institutes like these coaching classes exist?

An old government-sponsored TV ad from the mid-1980s provides part of the answer.

It shows, as I remember, a black-and-white cartoon cafe in a foreign city; two “Indian” men are sitting talking to each other in English. A very Chinese-looking waiter (slant-eyes shown as lines) comes up and asks, in English, “Excuse me, don’t you have a language of your own?” The Indians say “Of course we do; our language is Hindi.” “Then,” says the waiter, “why are you talking in my language?”

This ludicrous bit of idiocy is so perfectly representative of the way the moronic Indian bureaucratic mind works, that it’s stuck in my brain for well over two decades now. It was meant, of course, to “promote” Hindi and the use of Hindi as the “national” language. Hindi, a language which is the mother-tongue of rather less than half of all Indians, a language which in many cases is more foreign than English to many Indians (especially in the East and South). Obviously, not only was this use-Hindi drive not going to succeed, it meant that parts of the country which weren’t Hindi-speaking would simply decide Hindi was going to be foisted on them by force and try and protect themselves by promoting their own local languages instead.

Usually, the way this language chauvinism worked was by banishing English, the language of the foreign rulers, from the curriculum of government-run schools and colleges, and force said schools and colleges to teach in the local language. The products of this education system, of course, found themselves all at sea when asked to compete for jobs or try and get a technical education. And some states tried to “compensate” by introducing a measure of English, somewhere around halfway through the average child’s school career. This English was taught on the side if at all (the teachers themselves not knowing much about the subject) and in at least one case, in West Bengal state, something bizarre called “functional English” was taught. This “functional” English basically mean that grammar, spelling, sentence construction and all the rest didn’t matter. All that mattered was somehow getting one’s message across – in whatever mangled form, so long as it was marginally comprehensible – and these people failed miserably even at that.

Meanwhile the politicians inveighed against English from public podia, and quietly sent their own progeny to the best private English-language schools, because they knew perfectly well that English was the key to prosperity. The private school industry flourished too, with little schools springing up in suburbs all competing to provide education in English, and making money hand over fist from the Great Indian Muddle Class. I remember seeing one such school which went by the same name as my old school, St Edmund’s, in a Lucknow suburb. It consisted of one single-storey suburban home and perhaps four rooms turned to classrooms – and all were packed.

Meanwhile, the average Indian parent was frustrated and helpless. He or she knew perfectly well that without English, the kids had no future. But private schools were far beyond his or her financial means, and the government schools taught no English that was worth the name. There was therefore a new market demand for English teaching outside the formal education system. Now, if we know one thing, it’s that when there’s a demand, there’s always someone to fulfill that demand. And of course Indians are known throughout the world for their opportunism; there’s even a saying that Indians can’t score goals in hockey because if given a corner they’ll build a shop on it.

And so it began; high up on the upper floors of tottering buildings, or along urine-tainted dank corridors behind tailor’s shops, sprung up the “English coaching institutes”. Many of them came with fancy names: Britannia English Coaching, Advent English Tutorials, and the like. None of them made any claim to either official recognition or certification, but they didn’t need it, because the demand to learn English was so great that they were making money hand over fist anyway. It’s absolutely certain that many of them were owned by the very same politicians who blocked English from the formal education system, because they were making so much money this way.

Some of the people who attended these places were quite surprising: not just the usual students taking English lessons on the side, but businessmen, salespeople, and even housewives. These housewives were a special category, because you must understand that especially in North India housewives have no independent identities of their own. They are expected to be virtual appendages of their men and have no personalities left, so one might wonder why they might be learning English of all things. The truth is utterly typical. They were attending class so that they could go home later and pass on what they learned to their hubbies, who were too busy or too embarrassed to come and take lessons themselves.

As for the quality of the English taught in these institutions, I love to remember a little episode from my Lucknow days. A friend of mine introduced me to a guy – I don’t remember his name now, but let’s call him Atul Verma – who had been attending one of these places for a month, and was very proud of his new English speaking ability. My friend urged him to introduce himself in English. This person turned slightly greyish around the lips, looked around furtively and mumbled “Myself Atul Verma.” And that was all the “English” either of us was able to get out of him.

Then there was erstwhile cricketer Kapil Dev, on TV in the late eighties, promoting another English teaching institute: “It’s-a really a good-a way to learn English.” It was the stuff of pure satire.

This isn’t really too surprising when you look at the teachers in these places, most of whom can hardly string together a coherent English sentence themselves, and who have their jobs only because they’re willing to work cheaper than anyone else. The owners of the coaching classes figure that since the pupils know no English at all anyway, they can’t criticize the quality of the teaching. All of which would be pretty damned hilarious if it weren’t so tragic, especially when you remember that the progeny of those coaching class owners certainly speak English with an artificial Americo-European accent and probably spend half the year on the other side of the planet.

Very recently, though, there’s some sign that the people are finally waking up. In India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, the current government has finally decided to begin teaching English from the first grade onwards, as has the government in West Bengal. In both places, the same governments had been fanatically anti-English once but had to acknowledge the realities of people’s resentment about the “lost generations” of the non-English-speaking unemployable.

Of course, these states now have another problem, which is that there are not enough competent English-teachers to teach in the schools. That’s what you get when you throw away the English that you have without giving a thought for what’s to come.

Of course, once they recognize the problem, some kind of solution will finally be found. After all, in a world where, as I read recently, even North Korea has abandoned Russian for English as the foreign language it teaches in its schools, the allegedly hated colonial lingo has never quite been so important.

Myself being sure of this!

By: Jane Stillwater

Back in America’s wild colonial days, the main form of punishment for criminals was either flogging evil-doers mercilessly or hanging them in public. In the 1680s, however, William Penn spearheaded a movement to “reform” criminals by placing them in “penitentiaries” instead of just beating them to a pulp or snuffing them out. And the resultant penitentiaries were supposed to be places where bad guys would have enough time on their hands to see the error of their evil ways and repent.

Boy, have we come a long way since then.

Prisons in America today seem to have other purposes in mind than mere reformation — such as to warehouse dissidents and minorities, employ prison guards and AFT commandos, shower billions on War-on-Drugs profiteers and their drug kingpin counterparts, turn borderline-neurotic prisoners into true psychopaths, and provide cheap labor for the prison-industrial complex.

Is William Penn rolling over in his grave right now or what!

According to Information Clearinghouse, “Nationwide, the number [of imprisoned Americans is] staggering: Nearly 2.4 million people behind bars, even though over the last 20 years the crime rate has actually dropped by more than 40 percent http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31156.htm

Further, many of America’s new high-tech and for-profit prisons seem designed solely to break prisoners’ bodies first and then break their souls.

And if (not necessarily when) prisoners finally do get paroled out of America’s brave new prison system, they’re more often than not sent back into society so mentally broken down and/or physically debilitated that they can’t hardly even walk down the street by themselves — let alone become good citizens, repent their past follies or even hold down a job.

And according to FireDogLake, “Another growth industry in our Age of Incarceration is prison labor, putting inmates to work making everything from uniforms to furniture for a few cents an hour…. What began in the 1970s as an end run around the laws prohibiting convict leasing by private interests has now become an industrial sector in its own right, employing more people than any Fortune 500 corporation and operating in 37 states.” http://my.firedoglake.com/tomengelhardt/2012/04/19/fraser-and-freeman-creating-a-prison-corporate-complex/

So. What’s my point? Here it is: Americans really need to seriously sit down and re-think exactly what we want our prison system to accomplish — rehabilitate crooks so that they can see the error of their ways and become productive members of society again? Or create thugs, psychopaths and terrorists unfit for human company? Or produce pathetic weaklings ground down by a slave-labor system that has made them old far before their time and who will be a burden on society for the rest of their lives?

Hey, here’s an idea. How about following William Penn’s lead and go back to designing prisons that will turn bad guys back into good guys again? So that when prisoners have paid their “debt to society,” they will emerge from jail ready to be a productive member of said society and even give something back? What a novel concept that would be: A prison-factory that grinds out good citizens.

“But, Jane,” you might say, “How can that possibly be achieved?” How about that we start with this concept: Using the healthy example of Alice Waters’ famous “Edible Schoolyard” and your local organic farmers’ market, let’s have all our prisons go organic too! Just the act of feeding prisoners decent food for a change would be a huge first step toward rehabilitation.

Think “Edible Prison yard”.

And after that, we can even begin to work on the true cause of adult criminality: Child abuse. According to Jordan Riak, an authority on child-abuse prevention, the best way to eliminate criminality is to be kind to children! Now there’s another novel idea.

“The person who was respected and encouraged to explore in childhood is NOT in prison. …The person whose physical and emotional needs were met in childhood is NOT in prison. So who IS in prison? You will find people who were never played with, read to or hugged when they were children but rather growled at, whipped and smacked…. Violent criminals are made. We ourselves create them at home.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–I0X3-tOwE

So perhaps we can rehabilitate our prisoners by actually being kind to them too. “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!” But if we do that, then almost everyone else will want to get hauled off to jail too — giving us a better quality of prisoners that way as well.

And at the cost of approximately $60,000 per year to incarcerate each prisoner, think of all the money we would save if prisoners could simply be rehabilitated and released — or if that amount of money had been spent on helping to nurture young children so that they wouldn’t become criminals in the first place.

PS: Back in the early 1960s, before anyone else was even thinking about recycling, there was a man named Cecil Geraghty who developed a process of changing processed sewage into compost and fertilizer http://www.google.com/patents/US2861877?printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false. How resourceful was that!

Just think of all those millions of tons of “night soil” that are currently being flushed down the toilet regularly when they could be put to good use instead. Let’s revive that process. Let’s get all those nutrients back! Let’s reclaim all the human waste that is currently being spewed out by our sewers.

And let’s also reclaim all the waste of human life that is currently

By: Jane Stillwater

The other day I went to visit an old friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in years — but now she was dying, truly dying. It was a very sobering experience. Who would have thought that this formerly enthusiastic, vibrant and energetic woman would now be reduced an almost-human shell, a mere skeleton that breathed?

But the Grim Reaper eventually comes for us all. Except, of course, for me.

Having never known a world that existed without me in it, I find it hard to comprehend that such a world might someday exist. It’s hard for me to believe that someday even I too will be dead. And so I will probably live forever — but the rest of you won’t.

However, don’t despair just yet. Currently, large numbers of doctors and scientists all over the world are working their butts off to make sure that you too will have lives that extend far beyond today’s actuary tables. But on the other hand, so many corporate-owned politicians in Washington these days are also happily working their little hearts out to make sure that you don’t.

So many corporate-owned politicians in Washington these days seem to be going out of their way to work side by side with the Grim Reaper. They declare unnecessary wars. They tax us (not themselves) right down to the bone. They steal all our safety nets in order to have more money to add to THEIR safety nets. They bust our unions, steal our pension plans, enable Wall Street to invent pyramid schemes that ruin our economy, encourage big health insurance companies to cut us loose just when we need them the most, and allow Monsanto to poison our food, mutilate our seed stock and kill off our bees http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13459.

In America, death seems to be coming earlier and earlier to those who vote.
And now GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has come up with an even more sure-fire plan to help out his new BFF, the Grim Reaper. Now Romney wants to not only eliminate most U.S. housing subsidies, he wants to eliminate the entire department of Housing and Urban Renewal as well. That will certainly speed up the Grim Reaper’s efforts for sure.
According to Forbes magazine, “In a closed-door Florida fundraiser for donors tonight, Mitt Romney offered a rare glimpse into his policy plans if elected President. And, as NBC reports, he got quite trigger-happy.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/markbergen/2012/04/15/mitt-romney-says-he-may-ditch-hud/

According to TruthOut, “Romney’s plan to eliminate HUD, assuming he didn’t shuffle its programs to other departments, would bring an end to critical programs like Section 8 housing vouchers and community development block grants. And eliminating housing assistance is even more problematic given the disproportionate percentage of veterans in the homeless population.” http://truth-out.org/news/item/8580-mitt-romney-tells-rich-donors-his-secret-plan-to-cut-housing-assistance

But what does Romney’s latest brilliant idea actually mean in terms of you and me? It means once again that the rich continue to get richer and live longer while the rest of us just conveniently die off too soon — because homeless people have a lot shorter life span than folks happily housed in the Hamptons. You know that senior housing complex in your town where seniors now get a rent break courtesy of HUD? That will be gone. And without HUD, frail and ailing seniors will soon be wandering the streets of your town, dying in alleyways and hogging up all the space in your cemeteries.

You know those low-income “housing projects” on the other side of your town where all the poor people now live? Those will be gone too. Too bad for them. And now desperate poor folks will be wandering around in your part of town, homeless too. And did I already mention that they will be desperate?

And all those homeless vets? There will be a lot more of them now — also wandering around your city or town.

Remember back in the 1970s when Reagan shut down all those mental institutions and suddenly we had all sorts of crazy people wandering around, hopefully taking their meds but probably not? And if Romney’s latest hot new scheme takes hold, even more of them will be back on your streets.

And physically handicapped people will have no place to live either. They too will be wandering around, trying to elude the Grim Reaper.

And the number of homeless children will dramatically increase. A lot more little kids will be living in cars — if they’re lucky.

And all of these homeless people, millions of them, will be pouring into the streets of your city or town, herded in your direction by both corporate-owned politicians in Washington and the Grim Reaper himself — who also will have a sharp eye out for YOU.

Currently, about the only thing that stands between what America looked like back during the 1930s Great Depression and what America looks like now is the department of Housing and Urban Renewal. HUD.

When we taxpayers give our money to HUD, what we are basically buying is window dressing, the illusion that America is still prosperous, still offers possibilities of advancement to its citizens and is still a First World country. Without HUD’s Section 8 vouchers and other forms of help with housing needs, that curtain of illusion will be pulled back and those rose-colored glasses will be unceremoniously jerked off. And America’s current dysfunctions will be seen clearly by all. And the Grim Reaper will be set free to wander our streets at will.

But Romney and his friends will never have to worry about the Grim Reaper coming into their homes. Why should they worry — when the G.R. will find it so much easier to come into ours. If we still have homes, that is.

PS: I truly do not understand why Americans seem so fearful of far-away “terrorists” and are so willing to spend trillions of dollars to protect themselves from this rather small threat — but won’t spend hardly a nickel to protect themselves from politicians in Washington who are an infinitely larger threat to our lives.

By: Grainne Rhuad

World Book Night is a brand new annual event.  Its birth year was 2011, its birth place was the U.K. The folks at World Book Night picked the night well as additionally; April 23 is UNESCO’s World Book Day, chosen due to the anniversary of Cervantes’ death, as well as Shakespeare’s birth and death.

This year it came to the U.S. and I only heard about it serendipitously through following Neil Gaiman onTwitter.  When I did I headed over initially to help vote for books to be highlighted for the year.  The book I chose, The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson sadly did not get chosen.  (I cannot recommend this book highly enough however.  Go, Get It, Read It.)

But I was happily connected now through email, so when it came time to sign up to give away books.  I did that too.  I did not realize at first what a Big Deal this was; that it was only the second year and the first in the U.S and those books would be free to me.

I also did not realize that We, the givers were going to be the main PR people in our areas.  Okay, well I did kind of get that, but not the extent.  There was no media, which in retrospect, I  think, I should have maybe done some flyers, contacted the local stations, etc.  Lesson learned.

There is a map of the U.S. and where all the books were given away.  Northern California where I am is pretty sparse and I was amongst only 4 people in my community giving away books.  I do not know who these people are or were or even what books they had.  Most likely because they, like me were brand spanking new at this and had no idea what we were doing.

The book I ended up with was one of 30, you can see the full list here: http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/wbn2012-the-books

I chose Patti Smith’s Just Kids.  It was my first choice and I will tell you I had been thinking about reviewing this book since I read it last year.  Somehow the time got away from me.

Here’s a bit about me and Patti Smith and this book:

I didn’t learn to really appreciate her until I grew up a bit.  I always loved what she had done with music and poetry, the doors she opened for women and punk artists, art-artists and poets and mash-up mixers of all of the above.

But, I never really understood her.  All her interviews that I had seen including her documentary, Dream of Life, seemed highly tangential, yet deliberately so, as if she were trying too hard to keep from making sense.  As if, she didn’t want to share too much, she was holding back.  Which given the fact that Dream of Life was a 10 year project seems like a lot of work, the holding back, the privacy.  Actually the privacy intrigued and impressed me.  I like my privacy, that piece I did understand.

It wasn’t until I read her own written memoirs that I felt I understood any of what she had been getting at.  It was as if she had taken me by the hand and led me through her life.  And that ultimately is what we all want to feel when we are reading memoirs…isn’t it?

Anyway, the book is touching it focuses on her life with Robert Mapplethorpe, their love story and how it sometimes thrived, sometimes starved and made sense to them.  It was lovely.  So too was the weaving of music in her life.  So much so that I spent a good part of the next year exploring further the people music, era that was the soundtrack to this time of her life.  I have found a playlist-somewhat condensed for you here:

Just Kids

The music is integral to her story.  You just cannot get around it, it wove the fabric of her experiences and I think really that’s when and where I started to love her.  Her tastes are as eclectic as mine and I spent the days writing this listening to this sound track.  The spoken word or Burroughs, T.S. Elliot and Jim Morrison weave in and out, providing time and space.  You remember, there wasn’t television for poor artist, even most people.  Spoken word was listened to, soaked in, over and over.  I did this too on my little suitcase Mongomery Ward’s record player.  It made me remember how words and music became ingrained and so very important to me.

You may not have time to listen to the entire playlist right away, but I encourage you to do it, in sections even it will all make sense at the end.

Right, so the night of giving approached ever closer and we were given choices of bookstores where we could pick up books.  I chose my local small bookseller Lyons Books, over the larger box store seller.  Give me a second for a plug here.  I love this little book store.  It is the last locally owned book store in our area that doesn’t (only) sell used books.  It is wonderful and reminds you why you love books and your community when you walk in.  Sitting across from our central park, it is an icon in our area.  We love it to death and go to great lengths to help them fight off the empire of big bookstores and electronic devices.

Some areas did World Book Night parties.  As I look, these seemed to be mostly in larger areas.  Mine did not do this.  I was given a box, not asked my name, as I can only assume maybe the young man couldn’t begin to pronounce it and I seemed to know what I was doing.  He looked at me oddly, as if he should say something.  He didn’t and so neither did I.  It was quite strange.

When signing up we had to answer the question: “Where do you plan to hand out your books. “  I assume this was because one of the missions of World Book Night was to seek out non- or light readers.

I had answered. “Everywhere, anywhere including but not limited to: stores, libraries, parks, crosswalks, bowling alleys and laundry mats. “

My day on April 23, as it turns out did not lend itself to that.  In fact, it was a Monday which I had not even thought about.  Monday’s are usually my day off from the world, to do exactly as I like at the pace I want to.  World Book night necessitated that I interrupt my regularly scheduled Mondays.

I ended up offering up five via Freecycle.org.  of which I gave away two.  I did make it a point to greet the freecyclers face to face which I don’t normally do when giving other things away like old clothes and plant starts or whatever.  It was my first interesting encounter of the day.

Two lovely ladies turned up on my doorstep and were very excited to get books.  They also wanted to give me some.  Not Book Night books, just books that they had.  I didn’t need any of the books they had so they asked me how they could give them away.  I did not know I was becoming an expert on book giving, these were my first two.

So we talked a bit about what World Book Night was, what other agencies in our area took books, what stores would give trade in values, etc.  I completely forgot to get any pictures.  In fact I had intended to get more, but I was handing out books and I didn’t think to have anyone else do it.

The next 5 were given away at my husband’s office, to a variety of different people who I mostly knew from secretaries to counselors and administrators.  Most people I talked to just wanted to chat and were actually planning to share the book with someone else which I guess was okay.

I then crossed the street to a hotdog stand on a whim and gave one away to one excited man who began paging through it as he hit his dog with mustard.  Another somewhat confused man took one , but the cart owner declined.   He only liked books on tape he said and talked to me about his favorite author, some evangelist from Texas.  It was maybe the oddest exchange of the day.  However, I think people equate book giving with proselytizing.

I gave away four more at our local music store where my daughter takes violin lessons.  One went to her teacher who was pleasantly surprised.  Another to  a clerk who although had the look of a rocker had never heard of Patti Smith, a woman on a couch who was gleeful and one of the owners, who was distracted and looked a little stunned to get a book handed to her.

I gave the book out at a grocery where people wore stunned faces and wanted to know what they could give me.  I then took a few hours off and went out in the evening with the last 5 books and my family, each person holding one and turned them loose on downtown.

A couple of men out on a date shuffled hurriedly away from us with disgusted faces when we offered them a book, we heard them muttering something about breeders which was disappointing as the only message we were carrying was literacy and Rock and Art.

Another college  aged couple accepted a book from me, a young man closing the art store accepted one from my eleven year old.  He wanted to give a donation and gave a huge smile and talked about Patti for a minute when we said no to money.  My older teen gave hers to the “cutest boy she could find.”  Himself gave one to a bouncer who said he hadn’t read a book in several years (since getting out of the joint) and was happy his first free read was this one.  (He also right away, found the Easter-egg-hidden Subversify sticker in the book and loved it.)

The last one was given outside of the candy shoppe.  We had been given odd looks, dire looks, curious and glad ones and we had given out 20 books for free.

What I learned was this.  People are terribly suspicious of anything free.  They almost want to give you money they weren’t planning on spending rather than be beholden.

However a smile and a minute to explain yourself usually does the trick with the suspicious.  Children help your cause too.

What I learned about myself is I am terribly out of practice at getting out and talking to people.  It took a couple of times for me to feel comfortable talking to strangers about something that I loved.  I couldn’t imagine going out trying to hock something I didn’t give a care about.  It made me really appreciate my life in which I can chose how, when, where and about what to communicate.

In another way I was very glad for this moment outside of my normal inclination that got me talking to people, especially about books and music and how they can get involved next year.

I can hardly wait until next year and the next and more.  I hope it grows, I hope the organization can continue to fund free books; I hope people continue to want books.  Real ones, with pages.

And I hope everyone who received one this year, logs on to participate next year, they are already beginning mailing lists for next year’s participants.  If you are interested visit: http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/component/forme/?fid=3  and you too can be a Book Faerie!

By: Jane Stillwater

Currently many Americans hold a rather low opinion of Shariah Law, a system of jurisprudence used in Muslim countries that appears to be rather harsh, especially with regard to the rights of women and the common man. However, this all-encompassing system of laws is not, as many have assumed, based on the teachings of the Qur’an but, according to Islamic scholar Ziauddin Sardar, was conceived, developed and established by the powerful Abbasid Caliphate (749-1258) in order to help caliphs run their empire — which at that time stretched from India to Spain.

As I understand it, the Abbasid caliphs of that time became more and more concerned with consolidating their hold over the vast territories under their control and with subduing their opposition — and less and less concerned with the niceties of religion. With this new imperial goal in mind, Abbasid top dogs and their jurists began inventing laws mainly designed to make the accumulation of wealth and seizure of power easier for themselves and harder for anyone else.

The Qur’an’s emphasis on community and justice for the common man (and woman) was thus set aside and replaced with more Draconian laws geared to subdue the main population, women, the working class and minorities in favor of the Abbasid Caliphate’s top one percent.

Sound familiar?

And now, as the American empire continues to expand under the leadership of its own modern caliphate, jurists in Washington are once again developing Shariah Law — a system of laws basically designed to strengthen the top dogs and to subdue the rest of us.

And just like the Abbasid powers-that-be pretty much ignored the Qur’an when developing Shariah, so the U.S. Supreme Court seems to be pretty much ignoring the Constitution in order to develop their own brand of Shariah Law.

While the Qur’an speaks idealistically about all people working together for justice and for the good of the community, Shariah Law was originally designed as a power-grab and a war on the working class, women and anyone else who tried to rise above their station.

And although many Shariah laws do appear just and fair, we must always remember the basic reason why Shariah Law was invented: To maintain and control an expanding empire and to benefit the caliphs.

Likewise, the purpose of many current Supreme Court decisions — from the illegal appointment of George W. Bush to Citizens United and beyond — appears to be the same one that drove those men in black robes over 1,200 years ago: To seize and maintain the power of the few over the many.

Both the Constitution and the Qu’ran were originally intended to set men’s souls free — not to enslave them.

PS: At the Berkeley-Albany Bar Association luncheon the other day, our guest speaker told us about some of the decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court over the past year. Some of these decisions were actually quite fair and good, but many of them only seemed designed to allow the new American Caliphate to consolidate its power more quickly.

For instance, there’s the Supreme Court’s recent strip-search law validation wherein anyone taken into custody, no matter what their alleged crime was, can expect to be strip-searched automatically. Ugh. And apparently “Expectations of Privacy” is a thing of the past as well, to be replaced by Judge Scalia’s favorite “Tresspass to Chattels,” whatever that is. And you used to either have to get a warrant or show probable cause in order to search premises — but not anymore.

And with regard to voter-redistricting in Texas, the Supremes didn’t want to get into that one at all. “That’s a states’ rights issue,” they earnestly declared, a really big turn-around from when the high court chose to overrule states’ voting rights in 2000 and foist GWB off on us.

But we still have a right to petition our government. However, we now apparently no longer have the right to get an answer from it. And now it’s gonna be much harder to mount a class-action lawsuit against a corporation too — especially one against Wal-Mart!

PPS: Speaking of Shariah Law justice here in America, according to an article by Chris Hedges ironically entitled, “First they came for the Muslims,” Muslim-Americans are now being falsely persecuted by the U.S. judicial system right and left http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/257-justice/10978-focus-first-they-come-for-the-muslims

According to Hedges, “[Attorney Stephen Downing stated that], ‘I was unprepared for the fact that the government would put together a case that was just one lie piled up on top of another lie…. And when you pointed it out to them they didn’t care. They didn’t refute it. They knew that it was a lie. The facts of most of these pre-emptive cases don’t support the charges. But the facts are irrelevant. The government has decided to target these people. It wants to take them down for ideological reasons.’” Reasons like keeping the American Caliphate up and running? Yeah.

PPPS: If you want to understand some of the higher goals and wisdom of Islam, I highly recommend Ziauddin Sardar’s enlightening (and very entertaining) book, “Desperately Seeking Paradise” http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/desperately-seeking-paradise-by-ziauddin-sardar-6167246.html

Photography by: Nina Matthews

By: Azazel

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

How would you react if a stranger approached you one day and told you that if you ate his flesh and drank his blood on a regular basis that you will find yourself in paradise after you die?  What about a random person telling you that he deserves to rule over you because he won a popularity contest?  Or what about some guy demanding that you obey him because he’s wearing a certain color shirt and a piece of metal that you are to respect – and that failure to comply will result in your person being locked in a cage or gunned down if you try to resist him?  I’ll bet that more than likely you would dismiss such persons as being insane.

Yet such ideas are quite common in modern society – if not central to its functionality!  If you convince people that symbolically cannibalizing some guy who allegedly was the son of a deity you have yourself a religion with about two billion followers; if you convince people that the most popular guy in a given region is the most fit to rule you have a republican-style government; if you convince people that they should obey a guy who wears a piece of metal on his chest, and that this guy can shoot you for failure to comply, you have a “law” enforcement agent.  Such behaviors by individuals are considered lunacy, but when you have a large enough group doing the same thing it becomes only sensible to accept these actions as being legitimate!

Thus, by default, society is the arbiter of sanity – as a matter of practicality, whatever it approves of is rational and that which it doesn’t is madness.  And thus society reserves the “right” to judge the individual as sane or mad.

But, as Juvenal once said, “Who watches the Watchmen?”  If society is the de facto standard of sanity, then who or what is there is judge that society itself is sane?  If society is mad, then it is not fit to be the standard of sanity – but if society is the standard of sanity, then it can’t be insane, regardless of how utterly daft it becomes!

Needless to say, the default standard is a broken one at best – when one considers that we now live in a world where protest is “terrorism” (let alone the fact that people even *believe* in this concept – seriously, talking about “terrorism” like it actually exists is like full-grown adults talking about the monster under the bed…), incorporeal entities can steal your money (oops…“tax your wages”) and use the cash to kill people over 5,000 miles away (whom you have no qualms with, or are even acquainted with for that matter…) and considers the regular Joe with a rifle to be extremely dangerous yet doesn’t consider *a standing military* with access to everything from small arms all the way to nuclear weapons to be concerning in the least (hell, they’re “heroes” in the public eye!) any rational person can see that the world conclude that the world has gone mad.

I don’t know who first said it, but there’s a truism that says “When the world goes mad, only a lunatic is sane.”  If the society we live in has gone completely bonkers (and I have every reason to believe that’s just the case), then it’s up to the lunatics – those that society dismisses as crazy – to fashion a standard to measure the mental health of society (as those judge “sane” by the standards of a world are unfit for the task – assuming they recognize the *need* for the task to be completed at all…): as one of those people the social mainstream considers crazy I offer up this article as contribution towards the establishment of such a standard that the sovereign individual can use as a reference to determine social sanity.

So, here are the cues I propose one must look at…

Rationality of values

When looking at the values of any given society this should be your first criteria – just how compatible are the espoused values with reality?  Are they clearly defined?  Are they realistic in terms of one’s ability to live up to them?  Do they serve a functional purpose?  Any society that holds a value system that is transparent, attainable and functional has the foundation for socially healthy interactions between individuals.

Beware of societies that push unrealistic virtues – as the values espoused tend to trap those who hold them in a never-ending cycle of failure in attempting to live up to them, and when they do live up to them it’s often an arbitrarily imposed burden upon the individual that serves no function other than to frustrate him: for example I will use what is perhaps the most common unrealistic value pushed by any society – the value of righteousness.  The concept is defined in only the most vague terms (i.e. “do the right thing” – with the definition of “right” being a *huge* variable depending on what philosophical perspective is adopted), it’s compatibility with reality is questionable at best (since there are many interpretations of the concept of “right”) and people who try to live up to it wind up doing little more than frustrating themselves (if they ever give any serious thought about the nature of “right” and “wrong” themselves) or else become closed extremists for *their* own interpretation of such concepts.

I consider values such as this to be false values – the only function they serve is to keep people in line with the conventional wisdom (thus making them easier to control).  Any society that highly emphasizes such “values” can be rationally judged as insane by the sovereign individual.

Balance of values

Once one has determined what values are rational or not, the second category of social health is the balance of the espoused values – each value by itself may serve a function, but certain values may be over or underemphasized and that can lead to problems: all values need to be kept in their proper context to function!

For example, most modern society’s claim to value such concepts as freedom (whether they live up to that or not is another question – but more on that later…) but also strive to hammer home the concept of loyalty to that society (often from the moment the child can talk he’s taught to recite pledges of loyalty he doesn’t have the *capacity* to understand – solely for the purpose of instilling loyalty to the establishment) – if a given society values freedom, why does it go out of its way to instill a love of itself and a distrust for rival societies?  Does it not trust “free” people to decide for themselves what kind of society they want to live in?  I’ll admit the need for loyalty *within* a given social unit, but to pledge allegiance directly to it is something of an extreme (and it’s even more extreme when it’s driven into young minds that don’t comprehend it!): assuming that this is unintentional, there is an imbalance of values here that must be corrected for sanity to be restored; if it is intentional, however we have a case of social hypocrisy (an altogether different matter – one that won’t be easily resolved because society does not *want* the imbalance corrected…).

Consistency of values

Finally, one must look and see just how the espoused values of society function in practice – this is where the proverbial rubber meets the road, as all values function only as well as they are consistently applied.

For example, Western society continues to harp on the notion of equality for all but never follows the concept through to its logical conclusion – and this inconsistency appears in both the political philosophies of those who identify as being “right” or “left.”

The inconsistency of the “right” is perhaps more obvious – particularly with the stance it adopts towards immigration (the subtext of which being that “native-born” persons are superior to the “immigrants” – the definitions of such terms being quite relative, of course…) or towards notions of reproductive freedom (that a potential person [not an actual person, but something that *might* live to become one in time] takes precedence over the lives of actual, living people), but one can see this in the “left” as well if one takes the political implications of their worldview to its logical conclusion: as this would be the de facto result of policy for those seeking to limit/ban firearms (in practice, the common man would be robbed of the means to defend himself whilst the state and its agents retain full control of their own weapons – a perfect environment for genocide to happen…) or the use of the powers of state for “humanitarian” purposes (just look at what’s happening in Libya under “humanitarian” guises – whoever controls the monopoly on force gets to define such notions for its own benefit in practice).

In other words, with regards to the value of equality, both the “left” and the “right” apply the idea inconsistently with regard to their espousal of the value – which means both paradigms are socially sick and need to be discarded (as that’s the only cure for a sickness of that level).

In conclusion, I hope that this piece provides a little insight into the nature of social sanity and reveals that the individual is as qualified to diagnose the sanity of social order as said order is as qualified to diagnose him – that the entity that passes judgment can itself be judged…

By: Jennifer Lawson-Zepeda

Most people in the United States are facing increasing debt.  However, it seems as if people make their own problems by ignoring things to the point they become monstrous, when addressing things usually renders a solution.

Debt Ratios and Fear

I know what it’s like to be in debt and not have the means to pay your bills. I was doing fine before I went to El Salvador.

My life hit a crisis when I was there that made me feel like an outsider when I returned. Suddenly, I was facing debt that I had no intention of escaping; and I was so broke that I couldn’t pay it. I’m not ashamed to say that this made me feel like less than a human being. I’m not ashamed to say this happened to me.  Obviously, a person who ends up homeless most likely has debt! That goes without saying, or should!

It’s one of the reasons I’m such a proponent of approaching your finances in what I call, “The Immigrant Way,” instead of the American way…with credit. This means going without things until you can afford to pay cash for them, even if you save very little each month. If you look at most first generation immigrants, you will notice they don’t tend to take out loans or buy things on credit. They get things the old fashioned way, they save.

After living in a few countries where the interest rates on borrowing were up to 51%, I understand why. The reason why most people pay cash for their homes in many third world countries, or begin their businesses with cash is because, unless they are wealthy, they simply cannot afford loans.

Beginning from the Bottom

When the State Department returned me to the U.S. I was thinking that I had a place to live. They told me that was the plan. Having that ripped out from under me by the agency who promised the State Department I would be okay, was a huge blow.

You see, the State Department will not return a U.S. citizen to live in the streets; so the agency who misrepresnted themselves left me in a whirlwind.

But, I stuck by my my plans and overcame that until months later, I rented my own place.

Because of this, I got behind on some debts, like many other struggling Americans.

But I always had a plan to recover my life and that included fixing my credit too. Not because I ever wanted to use my credit again, neither due to some capitalistic need to enter the world of consumerism. It was simply for my sanity and financial security as I grow older.

I have a very different belief regarding finances. I think each of us is responsible to try to keep ourselves safe and healthy: mentally, physically and financially. I think it crucial to keep ourselves from ever being forced to stomach the dependence on others who don’t have our best interests at heart…like our own government and some of the elite bankers of the world.

• I wanted all of my bills paid off.
• I wanted to cash out my own place to live.
• I wanted to secure a place where any expenses were      below 30% of my income.
• I wanted my vehicle paid for.
• I wanted to ensure that no bank could ever make me      homeless again!

Why Would I Care?

It feels good to be headed in the direction of financial freedom. Especially, with the Euro in crisis and the impact it may have on our U.S. dollar and economy.

The Euro crisis is not just a Greek or an Italian crisis, or now even a French crisis. It is an American crisis, too. A crisis that may thrust the U.S. economy back into recession in 2012.

If the Euro cracks up, many European banks who hold Euro-denominated bonds will discover that their bonds have lost value. The bonds won’t fall to zero but they will lose enough value to play havoc with the bondholders’ capital. The banks will then either have to seek government help or stop their lending to businesses and consumers or both

The bank crisis will translate into a severe Europe-wide recession, just as the U.S. financial crisis of 2008 created a severe recession in 2009. Recessions that originate in the financial system cause more suffering and last longer than other kinds of recessions, a record documented by Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart in their now-classic study, “This Time It’s Different.”

The European Union represents a bigger economy even than the United States. If the euro cracks and euro-holding banks fails, the pain will cross the Atlantic, as the pain of the U.S. crash of 2008 crossed the Atlantic in the opposite direction. (Source: Why the euro crisis is an American problem)

Call me a pessimist, but I have learned through everything I’ve been through to plan for the worst and hope for the best. That way, I’m safe.

Who Gives a Rat’s Ass?

But the one thing I know is that those who have been in this country when I was still struggling to get out of El Salvador alive, have had an infinite number of opportunities to observe what I see and make efforts to create their safe nest.  If you haven’t taken advantage of the numerous programs set up to get your finances in order, then you should be doing the research now. It IS do-able! Even working from the ground up. You may feel so drowned in debt that you don’t even realize you can fix things for yourself, little by little.

How to Reduce Some Debt

I’m confident the Republicans will hate me for this. I’m about to show people of small means how they can reduce their debt. I’m shocked nobody ever talks about this, but it’s all very available

For instance, if you have student loans and you are disabled, you can call or write to the Department of Education and have your loans dismissed. They will ask for a letter from your doctor verifying that you have a disability, but they will dismiss your loans if you meet the conditions of a permanent disability.

Here are the details to call or find out how to do this:

1 (888) 303 – 7818
US Dept. of Education
Disability Discharge Loan Servicing Center
P. O. Box 5200,
Greenville, TX 75403-5200
www.federalstudentaid.ed.gov
You can reduce your cell phone bill if you are beneath a certain income level?

Here is a site that guides you through that process:

Free Cell Phone Service for Low Income

HUD offers help to buy a home if a person meets the criteria of having a low income?

(Buying a Home; U.S. Department of Housing)
These are a few examples of how a person of small means can reduce their debt and possibly buy their own home with the help of HUD.

If a person like myself can go from homeless to paying cash for a home, in a year and a half; then, you should be able to find solutions for your problems too. But first, you need to find out where you stand.


Where to Start

Maybe you had your home foreclosed upon. Maybe your car was repossessed. Maybe your entire financial world collapsed! But that doesn’t mean your world is over…even if you feel like the cockroach hiding in the dark corners.

Why not find out what your credit score is right now, for free. Here’s a site to give you an idea of where you stand:

Credit Karma for Free Credit Scores

It won’t offer you a report, but it will tell you what your score is so you can go further. You can then request a free annual credit report, so you can begin working on fixing your problems.

Annual Credit Report

This site provides you with free access to your credit report each year. It is always better to know what your credit score is so you know what you are working with.
Then, why not write letters to add to your credit report to give some explanations, like:

• I lost my job in a bad economy and couldn’t make the      house payments.
• I had medical bills that stripped me of the ability to      make my car payments.
• I lost my wife, husband, mother, father and went into      deep depression.

Some sort of explanation is better than no explanation; even if you still can’t pay.

It’s not fun. When you try to pay things off, it’s damned hard work. But, some of these programs may help when you think you are beyond help. Take it one step at a time.

“The Deist God”

by The Late Mitchell Warren

Seventy-five years ago, you crawled out of a warm and protective chamber.  You came unwillingly, literally kicking and screaming, as you had a very bad feeling about the world outside.  This was to be a world of pain, death and regret. 

Now, in your dying breaths, you are forced—humiliated and prodded—to consider the clichéd question of “Was it all worthwhile?”

You curse the God you knew, either for being impotent, arrogant or at the very least rude.  He brought you into this world without asking and is now taking you out of it, without the slightest concern for your discomfort.

When you finally meet God, you shudder, shaking what used to be your fists, and asking him why, if he is the loving father figure biblical scripture suggested, he permitted all this suffering.  To believe in God is to believe in suffering.  The death of innocents.  The pain of children.  The triumph of evil.

And God answers you in a majestic, booming voice, sounding nothing like your father, your mother, or your manager.  “All I am guilty of, all for which you can judge me, is for giving you life.  The suffering is what you created.  I watched your world unfold just as you did.  I cried for you.  I cheered for you.  You answered all of my questions.”

God gave you life.  And now you are faced with an even heavier question: what does anyone owe anyone?  What do you owe God?  What does God owe you?  Life is the virus, life is the payment, life is the product, life is the basic unit of energy.

Love is the side effect.  Hate is the evolution.  Emotion is the unintended.  The world you know is all part of the show.

It is only human nature to ascribe human qualities to a God.  We live in a world, discovered by a human, and in a universe measured by earthly terms.  Hence, we think of God only in human archetypes.  In our dizzying emotional peaks, God becomes everything we need.

• God is the father we had, or always wanted
• God is the mother that was there for us through thick and thin
• God is the bastard who left you to die
• God is totalitarian despot spreading hate
• God is an empty idea and an imaginary friend, one that you needed, so that you could reach maturity and enlightenment
• God is a big question mark, making the journey of life a worthwhile investigation
• God is an animal, which justifies the animalistic behavior you crave
• God is greater than your thoughts, justifying your restraint in life

God is all things to all people.  It is only human nature that we stubbornly prescribe human terms, human pronouns and human philosophy to a being that, by all scriptural and evolutionary logic, has nothing to do with the world we inhabit.

The opinion of the deist is a slightly different approach than traditional faith, atheism or agnosticism; namely that God created, saw and abandoned.  It ties in perfectly with the pre-Flood scriptures in Genesis that suggest the human world, at its peak decadence, was too vile for God to save.  It also ties in with the godless perspective, since God allows suffering mainly because he/she isn’t there.

Deist Beliefs

Deism is separated from atheism because an observational and “rational” perspective of the natural world.  An objective perspective could reveal that the universe was designed by something, something like an all-powerful creator, or perhaps a slightly less potent “higher being” with advanced creative abilities.  (Thus, we also read legends of ancient aliens visiting Sumerians and giving them higher technology)

The term rational is not to imply that deism or belief in higher beings is “sane”, but that it is human nature to rationalize the appearance of something with creation.  Thus, both warring sides (the godless vs. the god-loving) have an explanation for the “beginning.”  Human nature demands that we find a beginning, middle and end, because that mirrors the cycle of birth, life and death.

Deists believe that God is either absent in human affairs or only occasionally active.  A moderately active God, far too busy creating other worlds to be one’s personal savior, is a particularly disturbing human archetype.  This would imply that the fast-paced, commercial world we loathe is, in fact, the closest system we have to understanding God’s point of view.

The deist rejects prophecy and miracles, as they would imply personal intervention, and quite frankly, something less than justice.  After all, who is God that he/she should pick warring sides, football teams or certain individuals over more deserving alternatives?

The deist asserts that there is a “Supreme Architect” but that he is absent to the extent that he does not try to influence the universe by intervening in human affairs.  This is also called the “Clockwork Universe Theory”, which suspects that God merely set a mechanical-like universal clock in motion, and that the laws of physics have since taken over.   To intervene now would be to upset the delicate balance of everything.

The origins of deism originated in the Renaissance and in the “age of enlightenment”, as this was the age where science was born and ancient religious institutions were questioned.  However, it could be proposed that deism was merely a modernization of Greek mythology, a historical and religious perspective that suggested Gods were humanlike and sinned and plundered like the worst of us.

Curiously, early deists saw organized religions of the day as corrupt institutions of one “original and pure” religion that was at one time rational.  The priests were to blame, as they distorted truth and facts for their own personal gain.

The Death of Deism

Perhaps at one time, the idea of deism was a radical belief, as these bold questioners lived in a world of strong religious conviction.  Asking if God cared, preceded the notion of asking if God existed?  Deism declined heavily since the age of enlightenment, and historians like Peter Gay (Deism: An Anthology) fault the intellectual caliber of leading deists who could not really expand upon simple beliefs.

Rather than accuse deism of failing, most historians suggest that deism merely divided into a number of other movements, religions and perspectives.  Atheism, Unitarianism, Pantheism and Free Thinking resulted from the remains of groundbreaking Deist ideas.

Deism still exists in “modernistic” form, and attempts to combine classic deist philosophy with relatively new scientific knowledge.  The World Union of Deists still exists today and defines modern Deism as “the recognition of a universal creative force greater than that demonstrated by mankind, supported by personal observation of laws and designs in nature…and with the rejection of claims made by individuals and organized religions.”

At the heart of deism, we see a longing to assert God, or some sort of powerful non-human being, at the center of creation.  Ironically, one could argue that even deism itself is still a human archetype—perhaps the absent parent that we long to know and believe in; an idealistic notion that would make the journey worth the pain.

After all, classical deism is defined by the lack of a personal relationship with God.  Deists believe that God created the world and set it in motion but refrained from involving himself/herself in it.  Instead, God gave humanity the tools they needed to create their own paradise.

Modern Deism and Deist Philosophy

Modern deists even today reject the notion of a personal God—an idea usurped with a vengeance by emerging Methodists and Fundamentalists who emerged from the age of enlightenment—claiming that God is transpersonal, meaning he transcends what we know as a “personal human relationship.”

Conveniently, the Deist God can also rationalize why there are apparent contradictions and inconsistencies with knowledge we receive about God—not to mention the ideal notion that “every religion” is right.  Indeed, deism, appeals to people who wish to separate God from the church, and the miracle of life from traditional religious dogma.

God's Face When She Saw You

Unfortunately, neither classical or modern deism succeeds in providing human beings redemption for a confusing and disturbingly short life span.  Instead, we long for solace, explanation and hope of another life somewhere, someday.  Of course, an everlasting journey doesn’t appeal to most of us, as evidenced by the fact that reincarnation in almost every religion stops at some point.  What we desire most is that protective, sphere-like cave of inactivity where nothing can harm us and life goes on.  A womb of Nirvana.

And deists everywhere applaud that nameless, unseen and irresponsible parent for choosing life.

The Late Mitchell Warren is re-releasing “Attempted Rapture“ in summer 2012 in an all new Christian and Demon edition.