Surveillance State, Techie's Dream

Many nations now seek to monitor communications of their entire populations (UK plans are reported here - link). The State can access our information; they try to assure us we're thus better protected.

Internet and telephone provider firms are forced to pay for surveillance & storage equipment, costs passed to consumers. These ludicrous systems will cause many multiples more problems than potential successes. The banks & credit card companies are already thus regulated, but at least (because of the money) security & secrecy are part of their basic mandate.

Giving anyone access to such telephone, email, and computer interactions is monstrously problematic. Under existing & proposed laws, private sector providers will be required to store data for many months or years. From a security perspective, your data is at grave risk of hijacking. Technical entrepreneurs are sure to hugely profit from some such files or metadata. Resale? Blackmail? Piracy? Government snoops are angelic in comparison.

We'll soon be hostage to minimally-trained private sector tech staff who recognize the value of information they collect & control.

RIP Trayvon Martin, Afghan Hero

Teenager Trayvon Martin was reportedly stalked & shot dead in Florida. His attacker misread the situation, acted hastily (perhaps he was scared), and used deadly force to kill an innocent person.

This is a microcosm of the blundering American military in Afghanistan, often brutally killing innocent people as we stumble through their neighborhoods. We've no right to be there. We've no clear purpose there. We should pack-up the occupying armies and leave the Afghans to handle their own affairs.

Many people we've slaughtered never left home. Perhaps trying to protect family members, killed in their ancestral villages, many never heard of Washington DC, Obama or the twin towers.

But the American cowboy continues to execute those in his path. After decades of amplified threat from Soviet nuclear weapons, the deadly Vietcong, Nicaraguan Sandanistas, Somali pirates, and Al-Qaeda militants, the American people are terrorized and quickly over-respond... Too many are oddly eager to kill.

We can't afford to continue murdering innocent people. Trayvon is now a symbol for misguided violence. Trayvon Martin, Afghan Hero (1995-2012), RIP.

Integration of Migrants

Went to a seminar this evening about Migration & Identity (thank you Michelle Mann). A key consideration is determining what is successful integration?

Is it enough that a migrant becomes self-supporting, and stays away from trouble with the law?

Migrants from different cultures should not all be expected to mirror a native ideal of their adopted homeland. (Surely many local-born people often fail to observe each tradition). Society would be far poorer without individual characteristics of a disparate population.

Sure some will study & enjoy local traditions, foods, and culture. But those who march to a different drumbeat (or don't march at all) are not signs of failure.

Health Care for All

A healthy society is impossible without health care for all. The US system is horrible.

Obama's reforms preserve the medical profession's iron grip on health. Self-serving barriers to entry perpetuate high medical costs. Professional providers cite freedom only as it suits their own interests. Citizen self-treatment is not an option. We can only buy care at sky-high prices, from the AMA company store.

Public health is vital to all. We cannot have people in our midst with undiagnosed easily-communicated diseases, such as tuberculosis and hepatitis. Too many preventable problems get bigger, often involving children. "Preventable dental conditions led to more than 830,000 emergency room visits... straining already stressed emergency room staff." (link). "In 2009, 56 percent of Medicaid-enrolled children did not receive dental care, not even a routine exam." Perhaps their parent(s) knew nothing of health care options.

The main problem with health care is too many don't care if neighbors live or die. Political bombast condemns too many people to needless suffering.

The USA needs a universal health care system. Partisan lobbyists & politics lead millions to early death, at uncounted cost. 

Cheney's Change of Heart

Dick Cheney take heart.

Cheney's new heart is sure to get tongue's wagging. Did the old heart wither through misuse? Was love of money insufficient to keep it fueled? Can we imaginable someone was butchered-to-order, filling the gap in Dick's brokenhearted life? 

I'd like to think Dick Cheney is simply misunderstood, maybe misquoted, a monster in our minds.

But no - Dick is selfish & unabashed - a defiant, deceitful capitalist. Dick Cheney is a me-first social Darwinist who believes wholeheartedly the strong & assertive deserve the fruits of the world; the weak are in the way, and to cheat is OK. Whereas I believe no society can sustainably survive dog-eat-dog competition -- we're all weak sometimes.

Oops - if unmended Dick reads such talk, he might blow a gasket.

After Occupy comes...

Occupy has been beaten-down, gassed & subdued.

But the war isn't over. What's next may be more dangerous.

Violence against peaceful protest was a bad mistake.
Corruption & costly militarism enslave people with little to lose.

Hide the problem -- it becomes more threatening.

We must work together creating community opportunity.

Authorized Violence is not acceptable.

Crazy Jason Russell?

I'd never heard of Jason Russell before he was reported to have run naked in daytime San Diego, yelling incoherently about the devil and swearing at bystanders (link). It seems the guy was overloaded by sudden fame after a project he began in 2003 "went viral" in March 2012. He'll now spend some weeks in hospital. Get well soon!

He's lucky to be WASPish (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) -- otherwise he'd be shot by police or tazered. Maybe his deluded mind shortcut to fame?

Performance pressure made him already creepy-looking. Celebrity America...

Corporate-Owned Justice

Prison assignments for The Pirate Bay convicts have been finalized by the Swedish government. The four founders of the guide, which lists bittorrent information, were sentenced to imprisonment and fined nearly US$4.5 million (30 million Swedish kronor). Any of their assets are liable for seizure, the fines remain unpaid.

So the Government of Sweden, along with the U.S. Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), seem to have broken further threat from these criminals.

Is this proper? I don't think so.

The logic that convicted these publishers should threaten a newspaper publisher whose paper is used to start a fire. It condemns the postman for delivering mail, and auto industry executives when their product is misused in a crime. Librarians are thus evildoers.

Who should bear the burden to protect & to censor? The systems protecting industrial rights and intellectual property are failing, with major, fundamental inadequacies. Why should taxpayers foot the bill, and pay to protect unguarded assets? Rights holders should be interested in protecting the system. Are they investing appropriately? It is unworkable & non-sustainable to push government officials to simply shoot the messenger.

Sympathy for Murderers

The recent slaughter of 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar is notable as a lesson in misplaced sympathy and lack of contrition. Sure, US government spokespeople expressed regret, and President Obama says the incident (where nine kids were massacred) was "tragic and shocking" -- but the faraway military occupation continues.

Western corporate media now widely reports the accused killer had a friend injured in Kandahar the day prior to this violence.

We're not instructed to feel tragedy or pity, but the back story is notable: because nobody bothers to explain background or disclose justification for peoples bullied & bloodied by overseas occupying forces. Foreign armies take huge tracts of land, cause great damage throughout the social system, and park themselves in the country for untold years. Damage and slaughter has led some Afghan people to hit back - but they are labeled terrorists, often summarily condemned to detention or execution. Overseas military-occupation is a cruel, unjust colonial obstruction. Until we withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, The Rape of Kandahar continues...

Hawaii's military occupation should end too ...

Corrupt Whitey

Why could Catherine Greig, girlfriend of mobster Whitey Bulger, avoid giving evidence in open court? Corruption continues between the US federal government, FBI and Bulger. Filth & disease reaches to the highest levels of Massachusetts state government. Collusive deals stink. Continuing to laugh at justice, Bulger & cohorts triumph again.

Cheney Avoids Arrest in Canada

Dick "Chickenhawk" Cheney cancelled a planned speaking engagement in Toronto next month, evading possible apprehension for human rights violations (link).

Former US Vice President Cheney was a major proponent of overseas adventurism in Iraq & Afghanistan. His commitment & support for "harsh interrogation" led to allegations he promoted torture of captured suspects, and thus put his own US forces at greater risk.

Syria & the Khmer Rouge

The BBC reports today that "more than 8000 people" have died in Syria over the past year, including many women & children. Innocent people are being massacred.

Every day, the Western corporate press reports outrages.

First, is this civil war in Syria? If so, intervention is illegal.

Second, let us remember the butchery of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, who killed between 800,000 and 3 million of their own people after 1975. The Western powers supported the Khmer Rouge and kept them in the United Nations through 1993, long after genocide was widely-documented.

Certain key decisionmakers consider their own wider strategies. They are interested in resources, markets, enslavement of whole populations. Ambitions are rendered by their employees into our understanding of reality. They don't care how many thousands or millions are butchered. Their policies slaughter, but we pay the bills, and our own young people are their foot soldiers.

 

The corporate press seeks to stoke our outrage ... very selectively.

Employing New Methods

The limited liability corporation is a way capitalists exploit good times while abandoning responsibility when gambling incorrectly. Can we use these corporate forms & methods to develop progressive change?

Ayeland LLC could become a venture employing thousands of the unemployable or otherwise underemployed. What benefits can we bring to the collective? Health insurance? We can offer the self-assuredness of being part of something greater. We must plan defenses against demagoguery, and grave mistakes such as fascism. The corporate system can easily be multi-ethnic & secular. We can construct a corporate form that supplements the benefits & responsibilities of national citizenship, and perhaps in some cases, supplants national citizenship & the ugliness of certain patriotic posturing.

Disasters Japan 3/11 - Continuing

On 11 March 2011, a severe earthquake shook Japan's Tohoku region. The quakes & subsequent tsunami killed 20,000 people and damaged a wide area, including nuclear energy facilities built on the Fukushima coast.

Please spare a moment and reflect on the scale of these tragedies, and the continuing impact on survivors. A huge region remains evacuated & uninhabitable. Pollution is a major threat. Radioactive contamination and stress from fear of exposure engulfs millions.

One year later, the Japanese people remain deeply shaken by these events.

A valiant nation struggles in sudden glare, plodding into the future, Japan is now a radioisotope economy.

We learn: there is no fail-safe ... never trust industrial capitalists or the politicians they employ.

TV Nation - Da Doofus

I grew up in a loving home. We discussed politics, often heatedly. My family's wide ranging policy suggestions reflect deep-rooted differences in opinion.

What to make of this smiling Stepford family, politically united & wholly self-satisfied? (link)
Creepy.

I'm amazed these Harris Okies are fellow citizens.  Smarmy...

I want to believe .. But reality ain't so neat. Too many Americans suffer grimly without respect, without jobs, cold, lonely, confused, in poor health, and without health insurance. These folk's wholesome song supports Nixon's party of Watergate burglars, "dirty tricks" & genocide. There's no "Justice for the unborn" nor is there often justice for the rest of us. And Rick Santorum sadly won't improve conditions for most of us. I suppose I'm happy for this family. Hope they stay pleased.

Picturing Democracy ?

Here's an image of northeast Ohio's new Congressional redistricting. The red letters & colors show the nutty gerrymandered districts drawn-up under Republican control. The squared-off black lines & names are existing counties.

What a scam.

Uncle Sam - Assassin

Attorney General Eric Holder, head of the US Department of Justice, tried to justify assassinating America's enemies (link). But the killing is terrible policy by an increasingly rogue regime. The USA is a foreign occupying force in dozens of nations. The USA supports horrible overseas dictatorships suppressing huge populations. Control & secrecy are processes increasingly now felt at home.

Most Americans are most at risk from their own government: idiots who bury screw-ups & self-righteously attack all critics.

 Russia's censors taught our goons...

Dog Eat Dog

 
Andrew Breitbart (link) is dead.

Should Breitbart be eulogized as pitiful, or troubled, or heroic? Dead at 43, he leaves behind a warm family, and abandons his mini army of now-leaderless employees.

Noting Andrew Breitbart's boiling furies, and his wholehearted condemnation of the dead & disadvantaged for his personal gain, we see a boil lanced from the arse of the body politic. Another aggressive self-styled Goebbels is gone; his incitement of war is finished; his dirty tricks remain a footnote; his wealthy well-wishers shrug & turn away. Some commentators ask those disgusted by Andrew: rise above the fray. Pray for his children. A sad ending for this media giant.

Lost on dark streets. He wasn't granted Lee Atwater's chances to apologize or say goodbye. Dead in a ditch. Food for stray dogs. Suddenly gone. Cruising to salvation? Or suffering endless hell for self-aggrandizing attacks... Dead far too young from a weak heart.
A dark finish.

Explanations for Andrew's death remain mysterious (link), though autopsy details were made public; Breitbart's eulogies range from gross insult to idolatry.

He taught unabashedly that the weak are scum.

Why Wire?

I've just left the beautiful island of Maui, a place made ugly by electric & telephone cables strung willy-nilly over dramatic landscapes.

Travel the newly refurbished Mokulele highway out of Kahului. Look at the lush greenery, fat strips of ugly wires, and behind them the West Maui mountains. Look east to the lower slopes of Haleakala volcano, another scrum of wires, and the majestic mountain top. Perhaps you'll see a rainbow sliced to segments by electric lines...

Such pollution of our landscape is far too common.

Utilities companies:   please put wires out of sight.

Armchair Patriot?

Too many people wait for political leaders to improve their community. The wait is long & largely fruitless.

Politics in the USA is thankless. But there's no need to become an elected official and an object of derision, complaint & investigation. Concerned hardworking individuals maybe can better drive change if outside officialdom.

Shout. Become an activist, a muckraking blogger, or an independent journalist. Do something to counterbalance corporate takeover of our world. Take back your streets & parks.

Resist lifestyle homogenization & the feeble forcefed stripmall culture. Speak out among neighbors as a citizen & resident, as an angry taxpayer sick of lies & deception. Support local initiatives from your own neighborhood. Recognize you're in play as a patsy & putz. Act fast if you still can.

Choked

"More Jobs" are promised Americans by political candidates. But it's bullshit.

Who will hire in substantial numbers? Nobody will employ the unmotivated or poorly educated. America has not invested sufficiently in education & infrastructure. Increasing portions of our own markets are being wrested away by clever people from elsewhere. Positive change will never come from electing a not-so-bad political joker. We need more good ideas for becoming prosperous & competitive.

My best suggestion for many communities is to decouple with the automobile economy. Change your streets & parking spaces into gardens, piazzas and pedestrian-focused market strips. Too much community space is now -- without debate -- given over to ugly dirty Joe Automobile.

Zombies for Hire

Look carefully at scum selling services to USA's wealthy boss class. Newt Gingrich is one cheap butt-boy, Mr. Mitt another. Senator Joe Lieberman seems easily hired, as is Mayor Rahm Emmanuel. Shameless tools work in your community too - spending days marked by greed & deceit.

Cracked Corporate America

Corporate America, represented by both major parties, is close to breakdown. Most American people (99%) are an afterthought, a costly line item attracting PR & deception.

As Americans awaken to the crippling costs of militarization & attempted global dominance, propagandists crow about "US exceptionalism" requiring struggle. Our elite masters laugh & party - as we are cannon fodder.

Turn-off your TV and live your own way. Let piggish assholes fight themselves.

Sincerely Crooked

Newt Gingrich, Jack Abramoff, Dick Cheney & assorted other crooked scum have dragged the American people into tragedy. They blame others, but with great power & many opportunities they didn't help -- they looted, whored & made the nation worse.

...   Apple of Newt's eye: scary Mrs. Gingrich III

Turn it Off

Corporate TV news in America is outrageous.
US TV news is deliberately designed to mislead & confuse the electorate. Work in your own interests - Turn it Off.

Alternative & more balanced news via (link):
commondreams.org

Nazi Chicago

Photos & films of cocky Nazi SS troopers rounding up & brutalizing the innocent in Europe have helped our world grow away from those terrors.

But now Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel seeks to stifle American debate by magnifying protestor penalties and prosecuting those filming police brutality. The upcoming May G8 & NATO summits in Chicago are expected to rekindle scenes of 1968, when Chicago policemen merrily busted heads & bloodied the dreams of Americans seeking a kinder national discourse.

It is now illegal under the Illinois Eavesdropping Act to record police without permission. The Class 1 felony is punishable by 15 years in prison.

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy (link) reportedly favors video & audio recordings as protection for both police & the public.

State brutality is dangerous. Our foreign interventions deserve scrutiny, and domestic political suppression must be reviewed (and should not happen at all). Four words against tyranny for Mayor Rahm Emanuel: "Let My People Know!"

Screwed by Banks & Uncle Sam

There should be no banker immunity. Their crimes cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Their donations have corrupted government. Tens of millions American people live poorer lives due to these criminals.

Politicians suck the poison teat of corporate corruption, then ask swindled Americans to eat shit.

Read Richard Eskow on foreclosure fraud (link)

You LOSER

Mitt Romney is a self-absorbed rich weasel. In Mitt Romney's America, normal people with normal jobs are losers.

Mitt Romney claims he's a self-made man. What an ingrate!

In fact, his Dad headed one of America's largest corporations. George Romney was Governor of Michigan, a US Presidential candidate, and a Cabinet official under Nixon. In other words, Mitt is a silver-spoon brat, born on third base, who thinks he hit a triple. All his life Romney wealth & family connections greased Mitt's way. His privileged upbringing included private Cranbrook School for Boys, Stanford & Harvard. In 1966 at age 19 he went to France as a Mormon missionary, avoiding U.S. military service and the Vietnam war. Mitt subsequently worked hard - but his career as a businessman-speculator was built on a wealthy home life, family connections, luck & privilege.

But that's not why Mitt Romney's an asshole. He's quickly irritated by us proles. He's wholly supportive of speculators, bankers and corporate gamblers, while scorning normal people. We need a nation where jobs pay a living wage. Willard Mitt Romney cuts your full-time salary to the bone and then chuckles at your pain. We'd be fertilizer if he could manage it. He's a jackal.

Regime Change

Israel, the USA, and their satellite governments failed imposing new UN sanctions on Syria. Now chest-pounding & bleating about violence & death, they ignore similar outrages by allies. Don't be fooled. The Great Satan threatens the world constantly, and Occupied Territory is everywhere. Retake the Good Life!

Peace & Calm

Peace in the midst of strife. Calm in the throes of struggle. Ability to refocus & "will to chill" are prerequisites to sustained effort & ultimate success.

Enjoy the path.