By: Grainne Rhuad

There is a thing keeping everyone’s lungs and lips locked; It is called fear and it’s seeing a great renaissance. –The Dresden Dolls, Sing

Fear, it’s one of most living beings’ great motivators.  It arouses the senses telling us to pay attention, something may be coming, and we may need to act.

There is nothing wrong with fear, base fear in and of itself.  However most living things address whatever is causing them fear.  When the rabbit escapes the fox, it ceases to be afraid.  When it dies, its compatriots do not live in fear of ever leaving the warren.  Fear and its usefulness have come to its culmination and passed.

Human beings however are different.  We like fear, or we seem to.  We gather around campfires and tell stories of Unseelie things like Balor and the Sluagh, we watch movies to elicit fear responses and a great good deal of us get our fear fix from the nightly news, streaming into our homes, our consciousness, our being without even our notice most of the time.

Unlike the rabbit that allows fear to pass, we bathe in it.  We sit about talking about dreadful things, working each other up.  Interestingly enough, more talk occurs about ‘being’ afraid than ‘doing’ anything with those fears.

When we fear things I think that we wish for them … every fear hides a wish.-David Mamet, Edmond

It often seems that we make fear our pastime.  Do we secretly wish for the things we fear to come about?  Would the actuality of our fears be as terrible as we imagine?  Or would they in fact alleviate our suffering?  Is it possible that even with the most terrifying of our fears realized that we would have the relief of never again having that fear?

Some people say yes.  There are countless behavioral interventions for those perpetually in fear that expose them to those very same fears.  Beyond that, in interviews with survivors of war, torture and abuse the people who come out the other side very often live fearless lives; they have made it to the other side of what was terrifying them.

Other people however say no.  There is evidence that people witnessing their fears, as in say a car accident or death of a loved one will fold up into themselves even further, taking that occasion as proof that every doubt they have whether reasonable or unreasonable is going to happen.

Of course the latter is correct.  Everything we fear will happen, sometime to someone.  But, should we let it destabilize us?  The rational amongst us say “no of course not.”

And yet, we destabilize ourselves every day.  Purposefully, by constantly watching, talking about and thinking about everything that is wrong in the world.  By putting such a great amount of energy into the fears of the day, we are to a great extent missing the things that would normally balance out such fears.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.-Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful

Is fear in fact a passion?  Sometimes it seems so.  There are a good many people who make it their business to seek out and find things that are fear inducing in order to share them with the world.  You see this on news-like shows.  In comedy, on the internet with your friend postings.  The effect is the same:  “Here is something you should be afraid of.”  Almost never with a suggested solution.  This lack of solution runs counter to the very biological function of fear.  Fear is supposed to kick in to jumpstart our bodies into responding.  But, when we are exposed to fears that are seemingly insurmountable, with no discussion further than, “Yes that is fucking crazy and I am afraid.”  All of the fear is backed up with no action in sight to help us realign ourselves.  This creates in us an exacerbated state of stress.  How on earth can we combat all these things?

What is typically seen are people following up discussions like these with comments like, “Time to throw in the towel.” And, “Time to run away.”  This also instills fear into people.  How on earth are they going to manage that?

This brings us to the next bit.

Fear is the enemy of logic.

Frank Sinatra said it in The Way You Wear Your Hat but he’s not the only one.  When we are reacting in a fear based moment, we are making decisions based on preservation, but not logic.  We are not taking time to think things through and make a real and concerted difference.

The big question is why are we not spending more time dispelling fear?  Why are we not instead empowering each other?

It’s easy to blame all of our fear mongering on recent events like 9/11 and the resultant color coded terror scales we suffered through, which thankfully have been retired for now; as well as the constant ticker tape news updates which seems unlikely to go away.  However, it would be unfair to lay all of this at this particular door.

Since the advent of WWI people in the States and Europe have been afraid.  Initially this fear found outlet in an emerging art source: DADA, which on the surface non-sensical was indeed trying to make sense of the extreme shock and fear dealt out by a new type of war.

Humans being humans however; did not stick with the “let’s do something with our feelings,” route, and instead decided almost across the board to beef up on ammunition and war machines, further illustrating when people are afraid it’s easy to make them more afraid and control them.

We still are seeing the effects of this today.  Our fear caused the most recent war in Iraq. Saddam  Hussein obviously had no nuclear weapons.  There was absolutely no evidence of it, and yet our fear of him wielding it was enough for us to universally put a stamp of approval on an invasion.  We almost did the same in North Korea.  Who knows, we may still do so, we have spy submarines off the coast listening in fear to them right now.

If we were thinking with our logical minds we would wait and work with others.  A prime example is the situation in the West Bank.  Logic dictates that no matter how we feel about the “Holy Land”, people were there before the state of Israel was created and no plan was made for any of them.  Thus, logically we are all to blame for the ugly state of affairs and poor treatment of Palestinians.

But we don’t see it that way, because we are afraid.  Afraid of pissing of Israel whose pockets are helpful to us; afraid of the unrest recombining will cause; afraid of Asiatic dark people; and most of all afraid of admitting the world made a huge kerffufleing mistake.

Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.-Miguel De Cervantes, Don Quixote

The character Don Quixote may have been mad, but he was imbued with the madness of a saint.  He quite succinctly pointed out that our fears very often have us seeing problems that are not there.  This is true of things great and small.  We have very often discussed at Subversify our irrational fear of Russia during the Cold War.  We currently have an irrational fear of Mexico and Mexicans whether they are citizens or not.  We fear drugs; we fear not having drugs at the very same time.  We fear a police state and we fear not being protected.

But, one thing Don Quixote also illustrated is that throwing off that fear, while it may have you tipping at windmills you think are dragons, gives you a liberation that allows you to live happily, fully and without regret and longing.  Isn’t that what we all really want?

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.-Frank Herbert, Dune

By: Ronald Thomas West

How the philosophy ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ makes for ludicrous bedfellows & twisted agenda:

The paranoid Jewish Zionists embrace rabid anti-Semitic Christian Zionists who fully intend the Jewish Zionists will become extinct once they’ve finished the dirty work of retaking the West Bank for the Christian Zionists necrotic vision of a road to Armageddon, meanwhile the Jewish Zionists label non-Jewish anti-Zionist as anti-Semitic when in fact most of the non-Jewish anti-Zionists are the bitter foes of the rabid anti-Semitic Christian Zionists momentarily embraced by the Jewish Zionists.

Now, in the mix of all of this, the anti-Zionist Jewish personalities are in an impossible state of being forced to play a game of ‘shut the fuck up’ or get blasted by all Zionists, Jewish and Christian, while the non-Jewish anti-Zionist is attacked by the paranoid Ashkenazi, who became paranoid and Zionist, on account of the pogroms of anti-Semitic Christian Zionists. These people bite the hand of people who’re actually doing them a favor by taking on the rabidly anti-Semitic Christian Zionists, personalities who intend as soon as the partnership of convenience is over, all those clinging to Judaism will be tossed into a lake of what will almost certainly amount to man-made nuclear fire.

Meanwhile, the Sephardic Jews who’d lived for nearly one and a half thousand years in peace and tranquility in the world of Islam (excepting that period when they’d fought on the side of the Muslims during the Crusades) have become an extinct species in the Arab countries, not in the least because of both Jewish and Christian Zionism via policy and settlement in the West Bank and the incredibly nasty treatment of the Arabs there. Israeli Zionists have enabled this social injustice and American Zionists, including countless conservative Christians, have bankrolled these policies abusing the Palestinians. All this came about because of Jewish Zionist paranoia of living in countries with a majority Christian Zionists and history of pogroms, yet are (for reasons of the social psychology phenomena of inter-generational violence) behaving towards the Arabs like the Christian Zionists had treated them, in turn setting up the present cycle of anti-Palestinian pogroms, based on behaviors Jews learned from Christians, now on a scale of nukes & nations.

It only gets more ridiculous:

The Sephardic Jews who’d relocated to Israel as a result of fallout in the Arab world from Zionist policies are absolutely 2nd class citizens- pointing to the anti-Semitic tendencies of the conservative Ashkenazi Jews, a race based oxymoron of Jewish anti-Semitism. This is obviously as clear as it is ludicrous and self destructive, when a Jewish person in Israel cannot be equal, because this Jew has the appearance, language and customs of an Arab.

I think a moral to this story could be: Any Zionism that is literal Zionism (unlike the benign Zionism of Bob Marley) is a loser. Perhaps this could be the idea behind the UN Resolution equating Zionism with Racism?

Inter-generational hate and violence is a known and understood phenomena of social psychology. Many people have not risen above this malevolent infection of the psyche that is imbued in a very literal sense of the Torah or Pentateuch: ‘the child inherits the sin of the father’. (Or the sins of a xenophobic & nationalist stepfather)

In the larger picture of nations, relating to this inter-generational violence, should it not be the responsibility of several national leaders to stand up and state to the Israelis, whether the leaders of Russia, Germany or Spain, examples given, ‘do not treat the Palestinian as our Christian has treated the Jew’.

If only because it is the responsibility of leadership to demonstrate responsible attitudes in relation to the acts of nations; And crucial, is that nation which had transgressed most egregiously in historic times should demonstrate this courage to again confront the worst of these infantile and irrational behaviors, if only to remind the USA, not only Israel, do not dare to go down this road, do not dare to become the NAZIs.

By: Mike

The Second World War had only been over about two years and back home in Ireland things were still very scarce. Ireland had remained ‘neutral’ and most of her farm produce continued to be exported primarily to England.

My father had been discharged from the Royal Air Force as a result of a supposed injury. He was supposed to be totally disabled but to my knowledge he never missed a day’s work over the following twenty years. He must have got some finance from the British Government as in 1947 he opened a shop in Main Street. He had all new machinery and equipment and it seemed as if things were really looking up. I remember feeling very proud of the fact and his trade as a shoemaker and repairer began to take off.

Holidaymakers would come in droves from the UK with most of the British cities having their own special week. For instance, you would have the Glasgow week, or the Leeds week, or the Cardiff week and so on. The town’s population would swell by about double from eight thousand. Every available room and bed was brought into service and a week’s full board could be had for about £4. It was not unusual for especially the boys of the house, to sleep in sheds or in fact anywhere during these holiday periods. I knew some boys who actually slept in a local farmer’s hay barn.

You have got to understand that this was the time before a lot of British working class people had even heard of Spain, let alone thought of having a holiday there. 99 point 999 percent of similar people would never have dreamt of flying in an aircraft, excepting those who had been in the RAF during the war.

Anyway, visitors suddenly realised that Dad’s handmade shoes were, in Ireland, almost as cheap as ready-mades in the UK. Consequently, from about May onward, he would begin to receive written orders for new shoes to be ready in June, July or August when the customers arrived on holiday. Come to think of it, he charged locals’ £5 a pair and visitors £6. The foreigners were quite happy to pay.

In order to fill the orders, at certain times, Dad would be working from the crack of dawn, about 5am until way past dark into the night. He would make, I suppose, two pairs of shoes a day besides keeping up with his normal repair trade. These were good times as it kept him out of the pub and away from the pitch and toss-school on Sundays. It did, however, mean that all his meals had to be taken to the shop.

One evening, it was my turn to take him his tea. This was a task which each of the children looked forward to, as invariably, the meal consisted of a large fry-up and a pot of tea. Anything he did not eat was YOURS.

This was the major version of the Sunday morning ritual, when in strict rotation one of us would take Dad’s breakfast up to him in bed. It was the only time that he did stay in bed a bit late. His breakfast comprised of a very large fry-up, which would be known today as a major cholesterol boost. Once again, anything he left belonged to the one taking up the breakfast. I know I did, and I strongly suspect that the others did as well, pray with the most devout fervour, that he had been drinking the night before and could not eat anything.

On a really bad morning, you would get nothing more than a couple of rasher rinds. However, on a truly magnificent morning, you might be lucky enough to get a couple of eggs on fried bread, sausages and all the black and white pudding. That was like winning the pools……………..

Right, back to the story: Mum got everything ready and I was too impatient to wait for her to put the two enamel plates in a carrier bag. I said I would carry them in my hands. She made me check to see if they were too hot, but I withstood the pain. My objective was to get it to my Dad as quickly as possible, him to eat what he wanted and me to eat the rest. So, naturally, I was rushing………..

As I began to cross the street, in my haste, I slipped and dropped the whole lot over the road. I stood there transfixed – what in the name of God was I going to do. Luck played a part, as, unlike today, traffic was at a minimum and you could if you wished, play marbles in the centre of the street with the very odd car driving around you. You were in more danger of being bitten by a passing horse.

I decided that I had to do something quickly. If I went home, my mother would kill me and if I told my Dad he would even do worse if it were possible. I suppose it is really, come to think of it, especially if he kept beating you silly before he actually killed you. At least Mum would have been quick.

Another point to remember is that horses were used during and just after the way in lieu of cars. There were also a couple of farms just off Main Street meaning I suppose that the cattle and horses did not mind where they did their business. Anyway, I sat on the kerbstone, picked up all the bits and pieces, wiped the enamel plates with my sleeve and began a reconstruction.

The sausages I cleaned by licking them clean in my mouth quickly followed by a large spit out of the rubbish stuck to it. Next came the black and white pudding, which I similarly cleansed. There was a problem with the fried bread as some grit was stuck to it. However, with the aid of a matchstick from the gutter, that too was removed. The two eggs were licked clean and replaced onto the fried bread. “There, he would never notice”, I said to myself “but I must remember that whatever he leaves, I must not eat as I might get poisoned”. It never occurred to me that he might be so affected.

Right, so onward I went. To the shop and I gave Dad his meal. I was obliged to wait at the counter until he was finished. He soon got stuck in and was really enjoying himself. I thought to myself that I had made a remarkable recovery from my misfortune.

UNTIL————-

After a couple of minutes, I noticed that a bunch of my father’s drinking cronies began to arrive and lean on the counter. “Are you enjoying your grub Paddy?” one asked. “Too true” said my Dad “the best of the best – are you jealous?” “No” they chorused, “I bet it has a great flavour,” added one. “Too true” said Dad. “It should do” the other said to Dad, “Mick hopped it all over Main Street. It must be covered with cow and horseshit”.

Once again in my short life, I was struck dumb and numb and could not move. However, I called up all my reserves of willpower and strength and legged it out of the shop. A quick look behind and I saw that Dad was after me with his hammer. I ran and ran until he could not keep going and I waited a long time before going home and telling Mum. I went to bed that night dreading his arrival. However, he never did say anything and years later I learned that he was quite proud of me for the way I had resolved a very delicate, tricky, and indeed, sticky situation.

———————————————-

The strange thing about this story is that it does not end there: At my Mum’s Wake many years later, my younger brother Peter claimed that it was he who had had the mishap. I did not argue with him at the time but during a family story telling marathon some years later, I challenged him on the subject. He again claimed to have been the culprit. I asked him to tell his version and as soon as he started, I knew it was totally different to mine. He too, a few years after my mishap had gone through a similar experience.

On this occasion, we had moved to the new home about a mile and a half from the shop. Peter was taking the meal in a shopping bag on his bicycle. He says it was pelting rain and he had his head down. Suddenly he crashed into the back of a slow moving car.
He states that he was badly cut on the legs and face and sat in the road crying his head off. The driver of the car began to panic and asked, “Do you want me to call an ambulance son?” “No” cried Peter “just help me to get me daddy’s tea back; he is going to kill me”. They picked up the rashers of bacon, sausages, eggs, fried bread and of course the black and white pudding.

He continued to the shop and did not say anything. The only problem was that Dad saw the blood on his face and demanded to know what had happened. Peter says he began to cry again and blurted out to Dad what had happened. Apparently Dad did not give him a reason to cry any more – much to my surprise.

Ah those memories…………

By Jane Stillwater

http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2012/01/e-cannibus-unum-has-medical-marijuana.html

I’ve just about tried everything there is to make my sore knees and right ankle feel better — physical therapy, acupuncture, SynVisc (nasty stuff), chiropractic, Advil, hydrotherapy, Tiger Balm, xi gong, steam baths, reiki, Filipino psychic surgery, hypnotherapy, Zam-Zam water, deep-tissue massage, yoga,..  You name it and I’ve tried it.  But nothing has worked — until now.

Now I’ve discovered “DocGreen’s Therapeutic Healing Cream,” which is made from shea butter, palm oil, vegetable wax and cannabis.  That’s right, you read that right.  I am currently rubbing marijuana onto my knees.

And, yes, it’s legal.  And, yes, it works.

“But where did you get this stuff?” you might ask.  “While standing on a corner in West Oakland?  After skipping across the border to Tijuana?  By following hippies around up on Telegraph?  In the evidence room at the DEA?  Where?”

I got it at my friendly local marijuana dispensary http://www.harborsidehealthcenter.com/.  And what a trip that was too, with all kinds of types — from arthritic old ladies and dying cancer patients to young men and women who looked like they’ve never been sick a day in their life — standing in a really long line and waiting their turn in front of a huge display counter featuring everything from manufactured doobies and sativa buds to infused chocolates and ointments like the kind that I got.

But, hey, DocGreen’s soothing therapeutic ointment worked.

Plus it also made me sort of happy — a big surprise there.  Not that I was stoned or zonked or nothing, and there was definitely no slow-motion-type incapacitation or uncontrollable munchies like I’ve heard that you get from eating dope brownies or smoking a spliff.  And there was none of that sudden Bob Marley “one-love” positive-vib stuff either.  I still have all the same worries and troubles that I used to have before — that corporatists are still destroying our country and my tooth still hurts and I’m still overdrawn at the bank — but now I’m just a little bit less on edge about all that and a little bit more able to cope.

PS:  I figured that since just a little bit of DocGreen’s healing therapeutic moisturizer helped my soreness and also my frame of mind, then perhaps I should try a bit more.  So I rubbed some of the ointment onto my sore neck as well.  Wrong thing to do.  An immediate headache resulted, and then I started worrying again all over — but this time more fiercely.  Oh rats.  I just knew it was too good to be true.  Looks like I’d better go back to trying holy water and saunas.

But then I listened to Layna Berman on KPFA and she said that many people end up getting addicted to various substances by trying to “take the edge off” their lives.  Hey, I wanna take the edge off!  But according to Berman, no, that’s not a good idea,   Apparently having worries is a good thing — because they force you to act, to try out different things that might end all those worries.  Perhaps like joining OWS in order to end the corporatists’ sleazy reign of terror in Washington?  Oh, okay.

Berman also stated that by using outside means of cheering oneself up, then our body loses its own ability to cheer itself up.

PPS:  Then I listened to a video on “Full Disclosure” that talked about how California is being taken over by Mexican drug lords — even including taking over the legal medical marijuana trade.  Yikes!

According to a recent “Full Disclosure” report, “Mexican Drug Cartels are controlling industrial farming of Marijuana while enslaving both the illegal alien laborers and the U. S. Farmers.  Once entrapped by the Cartels, they are unable escape with their lives.”  http://www.fulldisclosure.net/Blogs/107.php

Double yikes!  Now I’m in danger of becoming a member of the Sinaloa drug cartel!  Just because I’ve got bad knees.

PPPS:  If marijuana is illegal, shouldn’t they make all those other artificial feel-good substances illegal too?  Like cigarettes and booze?  Wouldn’t it be nice if you had to have a doctor’s prescription before you could set foot into a liquor store?

PPPPS:  Someone else just recommended that I just simply stick to eating mushrooms.  According to a recent TED video on the subject, mushrooms are the last best hope for this planet and we can even use them instead of fossil fuel:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY  Yeah, but can mushrooms make my ankle and knees (and brain) feel any better?

PPPPS:  Then I went up to that dispensary on Telegraph Avenue at http://berkeleypatientscare.com/ and got a chocolate infusion to eat.  Forget that!  One small bite almost the size of a baby’s fingernail and I was absolutely frozen in place for the next TWELVE WHOLE HOURS.  I couldn’t even get to my computer to call for help on FaceBook!

****

This article is Part One of an ongoing series regarding the advantages and disadvantages of using medical marijuana. And if anyone wants to try DocGreen’s Therapeutic Healing Cream, please let me know and I’ll give you the 411.

******

From Yoko, regarding an update on the food and radiation problem still haunting Japan:
Kayoko and I have been invited to give a presentation at Pecha Kucha next Tuesday 1/24 in San Francisco.  We will be speaking on our experiences during our trip to Japan last October, in regards to food and radiation.  Please find all the info here:
http://www.umamimart.com/2012/01/umamimart-pecha-kucha-124-sf/

****

From Full Disclosure: The Dark Side of legalizing pot:  Is California headed for corruption much worse than in Chicago in the days of Al Capone and prohibition?  Watch this video assessment by Mexican Mafia and Gang Specialist Sgt. Richard Valdemar, who retired after more than three decades with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.   He describes how the Mexican Drug Cartels are controlling industrial farming of Marijuana while enslaving both the illegal alien laborers and the U. S. Farmers.  Once entrapped by the Cartels, they are unable escape with their lives.  Valdemar cites a recent example of the desperation of “medical marijuana” dealers in the U. S. who cannot turn to the police to save themselves from the Mexican Drug Cartels now taking over operations in California.  http://www.fulldisclosure.net/Blogs/107.php

by Jennifer Lawson-Zepeda

Obama’s State of the Union Speech 

fallout @2012 Karla Fetrow

By Karla Fetrow

When most people think of the Cold War, they think of a time when communism was a palpable threat and Russia loomed, big and powerful, ready to step in and rule the world if America failed to protect Western freedom.  For most of America however, in the roaring nineteen seventies, Russia was little more than just another country half way across the world, dark and looming, mysterious and highly competitive.

Not so for Alaska.  The Cold War meant that you were up against an invisible fence, fortified by very visible artillery.  We always knew when tensions escalated between the East and the West, because tanks suddenly began rolling down pathways cut close to the roads, and jets swarmed, shattering the sky with their mechanical roars.  High in the mountains, you could see the large white discs of the Dew Line alert system and the occasional dome of a covered missile site, and you could never forget we were watching and being watched.

It was strange living in the shadow of a nuclear missile site.  You would think it would be comfortable, looking up at that astonishing projectile, knowing it was there to defend you, but it wasn’t.  The missiles were a reminder of how terribly fragile we are.  The one closest to my home was a part of the anti-missile defense; that is it was a missile to bring down the missiles that were firing at us.  It was so huge, ten people holding hands around the base would not be able to completely encircle it.  The newspapers made a pun that the next missile to be erected would be an anti-anti missile; that is, it would go after the missiles that were going after the missiles we had initially fired.  While it caused a few laughs, mainly it caused people to shudder.

The threat of a nuclear war was so real to us that hotels carried instructions for finding fallout shelters next to the Gideon Bibles on the dresser, the schools held routine drills and every home routinely replenished their cache of emergency water supplies and canned goods.  We had a bomb shelter; a rather makeshift one.  It was a concrete, half finished basement, with one small row of upper windows facing the mountains.  There we kept the ping pong table, the washer and dryer, several folding army cots, a broad band radio, medical supply kit, bottled water, canned goods, hand tools and a small generator.

Going into this basement was like entering a stage area.  Descending the steps you chose which dramatic role you would play, locked down in this half ethereal world of washing machines, ping pong games and basic survival.  Possible scenarios rose over and over again of the close huddling, the deathly quiet, the long hours of wait before you could resurface.  Sometimes it seemed more real, this prepared refuge against the holocaust than the ordinary life circling cheerfully upstairs.

While we were reminded every single day that we were teetering on the edge of war, we still had our own diversions from such morbid warnings.  The pipeline was being constructed and there was so much money in the air, it seemed you could just reach out and snap it up.  Everyone had jobs; good jobs; and the air was electric with flourishing businesses.

I was just out of my teens and sharing my first apartment with my sister, Mary, and our two significant others.  We were on an astronomy kick that year.  We shivered as we discussed black holes that somehow seemed more fearful than nuclear bombs.  We tried to chart constellations with star maps, usually failing.  We constructed a solar system from styrofoam balls and neon colored paints, pinning it to the living room ceiling.  Some of the planets were a bit out of proportion, but we were proud of it and fond of retelling everyone about the kid that informed us we had made a mistake – Venus wasn’t a planet, it was a star.

It was one of those very late nights when we stayed up to watch our local television station’s very own late night talk show.  It would have been boring except the cameramen were stoners with a sense of humor.  The host never even had guests, but conducted his show by sitting at a desk and answering telephone calls, while the cameras took aimless shots at his hands and feet, moved the stage props behind him, replacing them with plastic marijuana plants, and sometimes even let a streaker run across the stage.  It was amazing what you could get away with on the air at two in the morning, even more amazing the things it would occur to people to do if they’re out roaming around.

It occurred to someone to drop the bomb.  At least, that was our impression.  We felt the vibration first, a low muttering that chopped the air into little slow moving pieces.  Our solar system fell, one by one, the neon balls seeming to float.  Time moved so slow, we could track the progress of each ball visually, but so fast, no words could be uttered.  And then it hit us, a roar more thunderous than the crash of an angry ocean, followed by a bright, red-orange flash.  The concussion from the impact knocked the curtains from the windows and sent the chairs and table rattling across the kitchen floor.  Only one person said, “it’s begun…” but it was what we were all thinking.

I reached for the telephone, intent on calling my parents, four miles away, but she had gotten to the phone first.  It rang before I had a chance to start dialing.  “Is everything okay over there?”  My mother asked anxiously.

“Yes, we’re a bit shook up, but no one was hurt.”

“I just don’t know how it could have happened.  The base has been alerted, but they haven’t reported any unusual air traffic.”

I reassured her I’d call her back when I had learned more and walked to our now wide open door where neighbors were congregating.  Nobody knew anything.  The police had been called but the police lived in Anchorage and it would be twenty minutes at least before they arrived.  A few army helicopters hovered and swooped, flashing their spotlights over the clustered residential area and beyond to the wilderness swallowed in darkness.

“We should go to Tip’s bar,” suggested somebody, and everybody agreed.  If there were any expert opinions at all, they would be found at Tip’s.

There was some scattered debris between the apartments and the bar.  Nothing remarkable, just some cracked door posts, a collapsed car port, some broken outdoor furniture tilted like injured animals, but Tip’s Bar was in shambles.  The windows were smashed.  Half the bar stools lay out on the ground.  The customers seemed more confused about what had happened than we were.

“Them commie bastards.  I knew they’d come to this.  They’re blowing the fish out of the water so we can’t have any.  That’s what it is,” said one.

A few had already gone to their trucks and picked out their favorite rifles.  They had formed a posse and they were going out hunting for the culprit.  One had found religion.  “It was a miracle.  I was just sitting here, minding my own business, when the bar stools flew out of the bar, then half of them flew back in again.  It’s a sign.”

Throughout the rest of the night and all the next day, the entire community stayed on the telephone line trying to learn who dropped the bomb and why and debated as to how it had missed its assumed target, the military base just a few miles away.  It wasn’t until a couple of days later, we learned it had not been a bomb at all, but that someone had blown up a military bunker.  Within a week we had learned it wasn’t communists or an enemy agent at all, but four teenage boys who had taken on a bigger project than they had expected.

They had thought the bunker was just a shell and dynamited it, but it had been full of stored artillery.  The explosion had caused a three hundred foot crater in what had once been a rolling hill.  The boys had suffered flash burns and when they sought medical attention, it was reported. It was also reported that one of the boys had been too close and had died.

The bomb scare brought to the little community it’s first police force, but not before the citizens had organized their own patrol and was doing their own volunteer watch for trouble makers.  It also very neatly leveled out a large chunk of real estate that was carved into wealthy homes to be sold on the exclusive Powder Ridge.  Powder Ridge residents, of course, have no idea how their real estate got its name, but the locals who remember would rather leave that capricious piece of land to deal with its ghosts.

The day the East and the West decided to end their race to build nuclear arms and stack them along the borders was a day of enormous relief for Alaskan residents.  The day the missile silo was dismantled was like removing a giant shadow that had lingered too long, its dreary tread too pronounced, from in front of the sun.  We had been frightened by a bomb that wasn’t a bomb.  We had gone out to chase an enemy that wasn’t there.  An entire generation has grown up with no idea of what it means to be in the middle of a Cold War.  It’s dreary.  It’s dark.  It’s filled with distrust.  Every day, when you wake up, you feel lucky that everything is normal, that coffee is brewing in the kitchen, that trees are waving outside your door and that the bomb hasn’t dropped.

By: Karla Fetrow

For a gentle summer and an incredible autumn dawdling nearly a full month longer than usual, Alaska is having a voracious winter.  Beginning with a powerful storm that churned the Chukchi Sea with hurricane force winds and freezing weather, it seems the personality that encompasses Alaskan climate has been snarling, “no more Mr. Nice Guy”.

The storm surges were as high as five to seven hundred feet on some of the Western Arctic coastline, driving temperatures down to below zero from Barrow to the Cook Inlet.  The cold snap lasted nearly an entire month, with colder than normal temperatures recorded throughout the state.   The town of Nome was faced with another dire hardship.  The vicious storm had made it impossible to bring in the last barge of fuel oil and gasoline for its residents.  A snap freeze a few days following the storm had seized the Chukchi Sea  prematurely, closing the shipping lanes, and the last scheduled shipments were unable to  force their way through the ice.

The distributors in the town estimated that they had enough fuel to make it through March and possibly April, but the sea would not be navigable again until May.  Without the additional fuel, they would have to ration their consumption by limiting their vehicular use and lowering the heating temperature for their houses. If the winter was good, with its traditional temperatures of five degrees to minus three, they would be fairly uncomfortable, but not desperate.  However, there was one thing the locals all knew; never predict Alaskan weather.  There needed to be a way to bring more fuel to the town in case the weather didn’t remain traditional.

Another barge company, Delta Western, had slated a September delivery of the 1.6 million gallons of fuel, then rescheduled for a couple of arrivals in October, according to Nome port commissioners, when the Alaska coast was ice-free all the way to Kaktovik on the Beaufort Sea.  However, the November 8th storm halted their journey and they had to turn back.

There seemed few options for the town of 3,500 inhabitants who yearly hosted the finishing line of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race.  Nearby communities were already feeling the pinch of the early cold snap, and their own fuel supplies were beginning to dwindle.  To fly in a million gallons of gas and fuel would be risky and expensive.  It was estimated that to deliver the gas by air, the price, which was already nearly seven dollars a gallon, would soar over nine dollars a gallon.  No American company felt they had the ship that could make the delivery.  When Russia offered to deliver to Nome, with their tanker, Renda, the Native Corporation, Sitnasuak, was ready to accept.

From the very beginning, the Renda was burdened with obstacles.  The Renda had to receive waivers from four different countries to pass through their waters, including a special waiver of the Jones Act that requires all goods transported by ship between US ports be carried in US flag ships.

The 370 foot ice class tanker left Russia in mid-December and picked up more than 1 million gallons of diesel fuel in South Korea. When a plan to pick up gasoline in Japan didn’t work out, the ship received a waiver of federal law allowing the foreign vessel to dock in Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, where it picked up 300,000 gallons of unleaded gasoline.

In the meantime, Alaska’s weather was anything but traditional.  December began a series of  storms that broke snow fall records on the western coast from Nome to Cordova.  The Anchorage Bowl accumulated five feet in a matter of days, while parts of the Kenai Peninsula closed down their roads while they cleared them.  Avalanches covered the Turnagain Arm, stranding Girdwood for a week.  Further south, Valdez, the great snow fairy land of Alaska, was buried under nine feet.

Cordova took the main brunt.  After receiving more than fifteen feet of snow, it gave up on trying to measure the continuing snow fall.  It had arrived at a moment of intense crisis.   The towns people were desperately trying to dig their way out and remove the heavy accumulation from the roofs of their homes and public buildings while gales roared across, sweeping more snow into their paths.  All able bodied people were working, but they ran out of shovels.  Additional snow moving equipment was flown in and the fight continued, but at times, it seemed like a losing battle.  Roofs caved in.  Boats keeled over, damaged or crushed by the snow storm.  Many of the residents were forced to seek emergency shelter.

Nome’s hope for a traditional winter was shattered by early January.  The heavy blizzards that dumped record snow falls in Cordova and Valdez also broke their snow fall records when three back-to-back storms dumped 17.5 inches of snow on the town and surrounding area, making it the wettest December in 60 years.

The December precipitation was followed by plunging January temperatures, once again throwing the entire state into the grips of sub-zero temperatures.  Nome’s coldest day, on January 3rd. with -37F tied the record for cold weather that had not been broken since 1917.  Nome was shivering now, and the success of the Renda, which had at first seemed just a wise precaution, became crucially important for the Arctic town that would not see another opening in the ice until May.

In the meantime, the Renda was battling with its own difficulties.  On January 6th. the tanker that had navigated around four countries and had been told it was too puny to dock in Japan, had to turn around in the Bering Sea because of a faulty valve.  The local residents held their breath as the Renda docked in the Aleutian Islands.  The Coast Guard had only one functioning ice breaker to help the heavy tanker plow through ice that was two feet deep in some places.  There were three hundred miles left to go, on the most brutal expedition yet undertaken in the twenty first century.  Would they make it, or would they be iced in, forced to abandon their project until spring?  The Renda announced it would continue its journey.

The Renda plowed ahead, with the Coast Guard Cutter, Healy, just in front of it, slicing a path through the ice the tanker could follow.  Their efforts could be called nothing short of heroic.  There were times when the ice was so thick, and the weather so cold, the ice immediately began re-forming as soon as the Healy cut through it.  The unyielding ice billowed and swelled in the sub-zero temperatures, crushing against the Russian tanker, sometimes pushing it from its path so that it would have to re-navigate its direction.  At times, the Healy and the struggling tanker were able to crawl at just a few miles a day, its progress so slow, a person walking over the frozen sea would have overtaken it.

On January 14th. the Renda was, finally, just a few miles from Nome and looking for a “parking spot” in the uncooperative ice.  The days of excruciatingly slow journey wasn’t understood very well by the pondering public, but the native population, so familiar with the Arctic Sea, understood the difficulties involved.  They even have names for the different types of ice conditions.  Said Mayor Edward Itta in a correspondence with Captain Carter Wilson as reported by the Alaska Dispatch:

‘Siku iluaqsilaaga‘ – means the ice is not cooperating.

‘Siku tatiruq‘ – the ice is very tight; not loosening (sometimes because the ice has formed or piled on itself in such a way that it becomes interlocked).

‘Siku nuutqanaruq‘ – the ice is stopped; not moving.

‘Saqviatchuq‘ – no current.

‘Iikalginnaruq siku‘- the ice is stopped because it is grounded (by ice ridges that are deep enough to be stopped by grounding on shoals or shallower water).

‘Siku nutqanaruq saqvaq suammigluni naga iluitgluni’- the ice is not moving because the current is too weak or from the wrong direction to move the ice.

‘Annugim aqmatinnitka‘ – the wind or lack thereof or blowing from the wrong direction is not favorable to opening the ice, etc..

The captain jokingly asked if there was a term for when the ice was being nice.  Nice or not, the Renda found a place to port in the treacherous ice rubble of the Northern Sea with the guidance of the local community.  The final step was underway; transporting the fuel to the coastal town. The difficulties were not over yet.  It was now a matter of transferring the fuel without spilling it.  The organizers for the transfer had already anticipated this, and had prepared a system whereby a hose would be attached between the tanker and the dock.

This procedure involved a number of precautions.  First, the tanker needed to sit in its spot, so the ice could form rigidly around it.  This would preventing tilting or rocking that could result in a fuel spillage.  Environmental Protection laws required they could only work in daylight hours.  In January, Nome has just five hours of daylight per day.

On January 17th., the fuel was finally running through the two parallel, seven hundred foot hoses.  Senator Lisa Murkowski, along with a number of other state representatives, flew into Nome to celebrate the successful mission and congratulate each other on it.  The truth, however, is that the State of Alaska had very little to do with the Renda’s journey apart from clearing the paperwork obstacles and providing an ice breaker.   The entire two month labor of will and determination had been planned, financed and organized by the Sitnasuk Native Corporation.

The journey of the Renda was incredible, a modern day illustration of the little engine that could.  It brought out the best in human qualities; inner strength, bravery in the face of adversity, cooperation, integrity, diligence and unflagging commitment.  It had done something that had never been done before; cut through the unforgiving, unyielding ice of the Arctic Sea to bring over a million gallons of fuel to a far northern coastal town.

It also, subtly, raised the question of human behavior.  When the tanker first began its journey, many of the citizens in the warmer, more comfortable climates, with a solid grid work of road connections and plenty of fuel, criticized its efforts as an unnecessary burden on the tax payers.  The tax payers had not paid for it, and if they had, another question raises to the surface.  Nome, along with Kotzebue, is the lifeline for the Arctic villages that often struggle through the winter with repeated fuel shortages and an economic base that does not always allow them to pay their energy costs in full.  It is rich in history as one of the earliest gold rush towns, a rush that opened the door to settlement and statehood.  Most importantly, it is part of the network of towns and villages that comprise the State of Alaska as a whole.  Thirty five hundred citizens or twelve thousand citizens; each town and village deserves the umbrella protection of winter survival.

While Russia continues to be looked upon with distrust by Western media, it has proven once again to Alaska it can be a good neighbor.  It made a promise and it delivered, despite the obstacles placed in its path, despite the criticism of its slow progress.  It put aside any political differences it might have to be of assistance without asking how long it would take, or how great the difficulties it might anticipate.  The State of Alaska warns that it’s not over until the Coast Guard cutter has safely returned to port and the tanker has been dispatched to Russia, but for many joyful Alaskans, it is over.  The impossible task had been made the possible.  Fuel was running through their pipes.  They could look forward to another fine Iditarod, with a warm welcoming committee instead of shivering fans and cold shelters.  They could ride out the next three months of Alaska’s decidedly non traditional winter, without worrying about losing their fuel before spring thaw.  The only thing left to do was heartily thank Russia for being a neighbor, a friend.

http://www.nomenugget.net/

http://www.adn.com/2012/01/09/2253848/thickening-ice-raises-worries.html#storylink=cpy

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/update-renda-final-position

By: Grainne Rhuad

So, what did the SOPA/PIPA blackout achieve?

First of all, anything announced that has to do with internet and internet freedoms gets the attention of most people using the internet.  There are precious few people who want restrictions placed on their internet activity and those who do belong in one of two categories.

1. Government /Law enforcement agencies-because they need laws-at least superficially to go after people.  Especially people in other countries. 
2. Large Corporations and Industries like Music and Film licensing ones and Media outlets who want to make money off of people’s work.  Being able to give away your own work for free or sharing music, stories etc. with your friends really puts a dent in their pocketbook.

News of the shutdown seemed to bring retaliation from hackers who claimed credit for attacking the Justice Department’s website. Federal officials confirmed it was down for hours Thursday evening and that the disruption was being “treated as a malicious act.”

‘A loose affiliation of hackers known as “Anonymous” claimed credit for the attack. Also hacked was the site for the Motion Picture Association of America.”

P.S.-I love how the news outlets discribe and downplay Anonymous…scared maybe?

It seems to have worked however since a postponement has been called by SOPA’s author which will be discussed in a moment.

Whose Minds’ did it change?

It didn’t initially seem as if it changed anyone’s mind.  Those who were for SOPA/PIPA got up bright and fresh this morning and arrested people in New Zealand in exactly the manner SOPA lays out should be acceptable to us. 

4 people from the company Megaupload.com including the founder Kim Dotcom and 4 of his executives were arrested in New Zealand for breaking piracy laws in Virginia where one of their servers is located.  Even though they hadn’t broken any laws of New Zealand where they legally reside and at least Kim Dotcom is a dual citizen of Germany and Finland, The U.S. wanted extradition and received it.  Of the other three defendants two were German citizens and one is Dutch. 

Other people whose minds weren’t changed ranged from Musicians themselves to most of the U.S. representatives voting on the bill. 

In a bit of strangeness.  Robin Davey, an Independent Musician lately of the group Bastard Fairies, Writer and Award Winning Filmmaker. Came down on the side for SOPA.  Stating in an article he wrote for Gizmodo “People have further been led to believe that music holds no worth, and can be shared or streamed at little or no price. Piracy will remain as prevalent as ever having seen the legal alternative settle so low, and the artists, content owners, and creators suffer even further as they try to cope with ever diminishing returns.” 

See he is concerned with losing money on his creative potential, which is interesting as his band The Bastard Fairies has given away complete and partial albums for free as well as created music by inserting rap and reading around stolen beats from other artists.  In fact, complete songs produced by Robin Davey are pirated. 

But early this morning Senator Harry Reid (D- Nevada) went public with the following statement:

“In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT I.P. Act.

“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices. We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day’s work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio.

“I admire the work that Chairman Leahy has put into this bill. I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans’ intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the internet. We made good progress through the discussions we’ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks.”

Also, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) announced on Friday that he will postpone consideration of his Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) until there is wider agreement on the controversial legislation.

“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith said. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”

Just in case you didn’t know, Smith was the author of SOPA and its most vocal proponent. He had repeatedly said the bill did not need to be changed and accused the critics of “spreading lies.”

Do the Internet Outlets in fact have any power?

This is a question I was looking for in this whole Blackout.  Pretty big companies joined the blackout.  Like Google and Wikipedia.  Granted, they didn’t entirely Blackout, their services were still availably but they were pretty clearly supportive, one had to get around their front page to go to anything else.  The message was there.  People use both of these sites every day, several times a day and they will most likely continue to do so, however it didn’t initially seem as if they held much sway in this case.

People went about business as usual the day after and even the day during.  Most News outlets declined to participate and very many individuals commenting in social forums made light of the attempt to sway the government in their decision making.  A fact that at very least shows the lack of confidence the people have in those who govern them. 

Yet in light of the above statement from Sen. Reid and others today it would seem that the public outcry and new type of boycotting did have the effect intended.  Lawmakers took note and at least slowed down to take a better look at this particular set of laws. 

This is in and of itself is a sort of victory.  Yes this sort of protest works.  Particularly it seems if some big names are behind it.  Google and Wikipedia-A big thanks to you. 

Who is hurt by this thing called Piracy?

The people the lawmakers will have us believe are hurt by piracy are individuals who have created things, like art, music, literature, research.   However as we all know by now, at least here in the U.D. an “individual” can be a Corporation thanks to “Corporate Personhood”. 

Other people piracy could potentially hurt are those artists particularly musicians who are just starting out who have been known to have their material swiped off of sites such as YouTube and lately Mac’s Cloud application. 

Most for- sale download sites like ITunes, Amazon and Barnes&Noble make it clear that you are purchasing copyrighted material.  Their TOS already addresses the issue that SOPA and PIPA seek to put in place making them redundant.

It’s not like the early days of Napster where music is freely shared and nobody gets a piece of the pie except the one 13 year old whose mum bought him/her a CD for the holidays.  Although, Spotify raises some of these questions again…but there again their TOS is pretty clear.

Others who claim to suffer from piracy are those like J.K. Rowling who gets really pissed off at any fan fiction using her characters.  I frankly think this is in bad form.  If you have inspired a new generation to write with your characters as a jumping off point you should be quite proud.  Instead she has been quite litigious in her approach to dealing with anyone and everyone.   

Who is helped by it?

With 150 million registered users, about 50 million hits daily and endorsements from music superstars, Megaupload.com was among the world’s biggest file-sharing sites. According to a U.S. indictment, the site, which was shut down Thursday, earned Dotcom $42 million in 2010 alone.

Although the company is based in Hong Kong and Dotcom lives in New Zealand, some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Virginia, and that was enough for U.S. prosecutors to act.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech and digital rights online, said in a statement that the arrests set “a terrifying precedent. If the United States can seize a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, what is next?”

Alleged piracy seemed to help this company quite a lot as it was reported they had 150 million registered users and about 50 million hits daily.

Along with the arrests the company’s New Zealand Bank Accounts were frozen in amounts that equaled over $10 million dollars.  Also seized where rare vehicles like a Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe valued at over NZ$500,000.and various pieces of fine art.  So it seems they were making a pretty penny off of this thing called piracy.  Most of which was of Motion Pictures. 

The foreseeable trouble with this case is the films were uploaded by other registered members. The company, much like Napster did not put them up for sale nor did they upload them.  They simply offered a membership fee enabling people to share more content.  They were also supported by the very people they were supposedly pirating from.  Music industry giants like Black Eyed Peas and Jamie Foxx participated in videos supporting the service. Although after the arrests most parties denied it.

 

Besides being trance inducing…it’s pretty clear from the video they can’t deny they were a part of the commercial.

Is there a different, better-ish way?

Is there a way for us all to be happy, share content, practice writing, create fan fiction/videos/cartoons while making everyone happy and not costing artists money?

I think the answer is maybe. 

I say maybe because it will require less greed on the part of the J. K. Rowlings of the world.  A lot of artists whose books, movies, music sells on the internet were in fact against the bill and issued statements to that effect. 

Artists against SOPA including Trent Reznor, OK-Go, Neil Gaiman, and more wrote an open letter decrying the bill.  Many artists and celebrities added Stop SOPA to their twitter accts. The difference is these are people who are actively connected to their audience.  They make use of the new ways of communicating and encourage others to emulate them.  They very often give away their works for free.  This is because they have moved with the times and know the best way to get your work out to the people is to let them know about it.  If they love it they will pay.  We see this work very often at places like Bandcamp where naming your own price for music, even if it’s zero very often nets musicians more than they would get from the record companies.  People understand the work that goes into producing something and mostly they are willing to pay for it.  Name your own price works because of that and because of this trust in the artist-fan relationship nobody needs to worry about Piracy.

What have we learned in the last few days?

What I’ve taken out of this whole experience is that unexpected people care about unexpected things.  I never would have thought Robin Davey gave a shit about piracy.  I also never would have thought that the author of SOPA would listen to the world of the internet.  I am pleasantly surprised in that.  I went into this year feeling pretty good about the world in general.  Yes it’s in pretty bad shape and yes we are losing choices daily.  It’s definitely not 31 flavors out there anymore.  But we do still have the choice to stand for something.  And sometimes we are heard.  Which is really nice.  But what’s more important than being heard is standing up, because integrity is everything. 

Also pirates are not all bad, sometimes they take what is on offer and give it away to those who will improve on things and make them better.  It’s really the very wealthy and non-creative people who are most afraid of pirates, because they can’t make anything new.

By :Jane Stillwater

http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2012/01/bizarre-news-what-american-corporatists.html

After I got my long hair caught in a vacuum cleaner the other day, my first thought was pure terror — like I had just been attacked by werewolves or vampires with claws!  But then my second thought was, “Gee, at least I HAVE a vacuum cleaner”.

Despite the recent huge economic downturn, most Americans are still relatively well-off right now, even me.  Sure, our infrastructure sucks eggs and we mostly have run-down schools and hospitals, but at least we still have them.  Old and run down.  But still functioning at least.

But wait!  Perhaps help for our hospitals is finally on the way!  Is it really true that American corporatists have recently decided to spend over nine billion dollars to build at least 20 brand new state-of-the-art hospitals in Georgia?  According to RT News, yes indeed this is true.

The only problem here, however, is that the corporatists who currently own our country are now in the process of building these 20 wonderful new hospitals in the former Soviet-bloc state of Georgia — not in the American state with the same name that’s famous for peaches and Braves.  http://rt.com/politics/us-georgia-iran-war-441/

How bizarre is that news?

And now I’ve just read where American corporatists have recently sent in the U.S. Coast Guard to break up a strike by American longshoremen.  That’s even more bizarre than getting one’s hair sucked into a vacuum cleaner — and even more painful.  One can always just cut one’s hair off, but forcing America’s military to act like low-life strike-breaking scabs?  That’s a cut to our democracy that may never heal.

ILWU members had been promised jobs in Longview as a priority condition for allowing corporatists to receive massive federal subsidies to build a new terminal at the Washington state port.  But after the terminal was safely built, greedy corporatist slugs then fired the longshoremen’s union members point-blank — and not only got away with it but used the U.S. military as their own personal enforcers and thugs. http://www.longshoreshippingnews.com/2011/10/san-francisco-unions-support-ilwu-local-21-at-egt/.

Am I the only one that finds this news a bit bizarre?

American coproratists seem to be getting away with EVERYTHING these days.  Cheating on elections, throwing people out of their homes, never paying taxes, robbing our treasury blind, fighting undeclared wars for fun and profit on our dime, beating protesting citizens with clubs, buying off Congress, etc.  But almost nobody in America seems to want to stop them.

Here’s more bizarre news — Stephen Cobert’s video explaining how corporatist superPACs steal our elections:  http://www.colbertsuperpac.com/

Had enough yet?  Or do you want to read some even more bizarre news about what corporatists are getting away with now?  Yes?  Then take a long look at this:  The unassailable New York Times, the esteemed Gray Lady herself, recently reported that the IAEA had accused Iran of using its nuclear program to develop military weapons.  But guess what?  The IAEA had said no such thing.  Now the esteemed Gray Lady has lied to us (again) in order to get us into a useless and unnecessary war (again) that would only benefit corporatists.  http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/times-errors-irans-nukes-sfs-voting/

Very deja vu.  Very bizarre.

But — to me (but apparently to nobody else) — this is the absolute most bizarre news of all:  Perry, Santorum, Obama, Romney and even Newt Gingrich and JEB Bush are all running on a platform of being good Christians.  Huh?  What?

NO ONE who either calls for the bombing women and children in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and America — or is actually out doing it — can EVER call himself or herself a good Christian.  Ever.  These people are no more good Christians than was Attila the Hun.

Send drones to kill babies?  Where in the Bible does it say that Jesus did that?

Leaving the meek of the earth to starve to death and the peacemakers of the world to be jailed?  Jesus is down with that too?  Not!

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” said Jesus.  Beating down non-violent OWS protesters with pepper spray, tear gas and truncheons?  NOT CHRISTIAN.  Not Christian at all.

Yet no one seems to be calling these monsters out on their uber-hypocracy.  No one calls them out at all.  That’s bizarre.

And it’s also rather bizarre that all these corporatist presidential candidates are happily telling us that they are in favor of “Democracy”.  There is NOTHING less democratic than a corporation.  Face it, CEOs are tyrants.  Corporatists worship the dictatorship model.  To tell us that they want America to remain a democracy is absurd.

Corporatists by definition are top-down kinds of guys, “Do what I say or else you will lose all.”  Corporatists by definition are bullying-type authoritarians who spit on America’s treasured democratic principles — and don’t you ever forget it!

Now let’s turn to the comic-page section of the news.

The average American today seems to more and more resemble that Peanuts cartoon character Charlie Brown — always trusting that somehow Lucy will let him finally kick the football.  But guess what?  No matter how many times you vote for the party of Bush-Obama-Romney-Santorum-Clinton-Paul or believe mainstream media reports or trust corporatists to finally hold the ball upright, you are still gonna get tricked every time.  And you’re still gonna land flat on your face while corporatist secretly laugh at you as you lie there in the mud.  And it’s still gonna hurt.

How’s that for bizarre news?

Rotters, Washington DC 19 January 2012

By: your correspondent Bill the Butcher

 

Today, in a packed news conference, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta made a startling disclosure: that the infamous video of US Marines urinating on what appeared to be Taliban corpses was nothing of the sort.

 

 

 

“It’s true, of course, that those were men of the 3^rd battalion, 2^nd Marines, and that the episode happened in Afghanistan,” he said, “and it is true that the video depicts those men urinating on Taliban men lying on the ground. But it is absolutely not true that this video depicts any desecration of Taliban corpses.

 

“After minutes of intensive inquiries amongst the personnel of the battalion, the truth has come to light: that instead of attempting to desecrate the corpses of dead jihadists, those brave American warriors were going out of their way to perform an errand of mercy.

 

“The facts are these: that the Taliban were not dead, but were in intense agony from jellyfish stings. As is well known, the venom of many jellyfishes is highly acidic and urine has been used, by no less a celebrity than Thor Heyerdahl, as an emergency first-aid measure to neutralise that acid. Instead of thinking of their own safety, our brave Marines went beyond the call of duty to help these ragheads…I mean, Taliban…recover from those stings by applying their urine on them, even in the middle of the battlefield with bullets flying all around.

 

“It’s even more of a sacrifice on their part when you realise that these brave men had been saving up their urine for a party after returning to base, when they were to have taught some grateful Afghan women they had liberated from the clutches of the Taliban the meaning of the term ‘golden shower’. Those Afghan ladies will unfortunately have to wait for another opportunity to complete their education on that point.

 

“Meanwhile, investigations are underway to find out the identity of the traitorous scum who posted that video on the internet. He, or she, is undoubtedly a terrorist sympathiser and will be imprisoned without trial or else, if that is unfeasible, taken out by drone strike. The President will tolerate no treason of this kind, which is designed to undermine the morale of our brave men and women in uniform.”

 

To incredulous queries from correspondents asking how the Taliban could have been stung by jellyfish in mountainous, landlocked Afghanistan, Mr Panetta had this to say:

 

“As you know, the President has declared the war in Afghanistan to be the Good War. The Taliban and the Al Qaeda are in cahoots, and continue to cooperate closely to this day, planning strikes meant to overthrow and destroy Israel and the United States. The President’s commitment to the security of Israel is second to none, and he is determined to make sure that Israel’s right to self-defence is not compromised. That is why we will keep fighting in Afghanistan, if need be, another thousand years.

 

“We have strong intelligence input proving that the Taliban are regularly sending men down to the bottom of the Arabian Sea to confer with the corpse of Osama bin Laden. Those Taliban were, according to our intelligence inputs, among the latest batch of emissaries to the Al Qaeda terrorist who was executed by the President last year. They must have been stung by jellyfish while under water.

 

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “the Taliban failed to survive their jellyfish stings – in fact they died while first aid was still being administered in the form of urine – but the Marines continued to administer the urine because they are well aware of religious sensibilities and know well that the Islamic injunction is to wash the bodies of the dead before burial. Afghanistan, as we all know, is a horrible, dry land – nothing like these lovely United States that God has declared to be the greatest nation in the world – and water is a rarity. Therefore, those Marines were doing a social service by washing those dead jihadists with urine, which my doctor assures me is sterile and is far better than any other water those terrorist fucks…uh, Taliban…would have been washed with otherwise, if at all.

 

“All in all, those brave warriors deserve our commendation, not our condemnation, and for their courage and self-sacrifice, I have accordingly personally recommended them for the Congressional Medal of Honour.”

 

Meanwhile, in response to this information proving that the Al Qaeda and the Taliban continue their cooperation, President Obama announced that the United States would immediately impose an additional round of sanctions on 1083 Iranian entities, including fishermen and cashew-nut sellers, and demanded that Europe and Japan follow suit. He also announced that the US would begin the construction of an additional ten aircraft carrier groups in order to protect US interests overseas and to stop any future underwater meetings between Osama bin Laden’s corpse and Taliban men.

 

While these measures failed to satisfy his Republican opponents, who demanded an immediate attack on Iran, conservative commentators such as Pamela Geller and Ann Coulter declared that Obama’s policies had made US Marines too “soft hearted” for their own good, and that they should have made no attempt to help the Taliban. “Those Muslim jihadist terrorists want to overthrow the United States,” Geller wrote. “They deserve anything they get – except first aid or washing. Get the Traitor Out of the White House Now!”

 

Speaking outside the gates of the White House, self-professed liberal atheist and president of the Association of Worshippers of Obama the Lord (AWOL), Barb Bummer, popularly known as Aunt Barbara, announced that her organisation would redouble its efforts to secure his re-election and that it would petition the Nobel Prize Committee to award the President not just a second Nobel Peace Prize but also the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economics. “He is a man so superior,” she said, “that he deserves every single prize the human race has ever invented!”

 

Meanwhile, in an Afghan village, a farmer called Majid Khan, speaking to your correspondent in a one-to-one interview, said that the three men in the video were civilians and not Taliban at all, and in response to what he called the “desecration” of their corpses, he would dig out his old AK 47 from the anti-Soviet jihad and join in the resistance movement. “They killed three young men of my village,” he said, “and befouled their bodies. Three hundred will now take up arms against them.”

 

Osama bin Laden’s corpse could not be reached for comment.