Storm Clouds on the Horizon

“Racial injustice, war, urban blight, and environmental rape have a common denominator in our exploitative economic system.”
-Channing E. Phillips
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
-Edward Abbey
"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed."
-Mahatma Gandhi



According to some minds, the West is going through what the Soviets did some 20 years ago- economic crisis leading to massive social upheaval and reassessing the path we are on. That's what you get when your whole system is based on perpetual growth and wealth to maintain peoples support. It wont be long until the gloves come off and blood flows in the streets of the West as it has been in the colonies for some time. The people who own all the wealth are extremely intelligent, and have always managed to pass the blame on to miscellaneous patsies in such times. Seeing as how enlistment rates are skyrocketing as more and more families turn to military service for a salary, it looks like America will do what most Empires have done when things look bleak at home... go take shit from less violent peoples. Nothing like rivers of blood and gore to help placate an unruly populace. And if all that fails, their is always the jackboot waiting for a face to stomp on. Considering how completely pussified and cowardly most Americans are, it shouldn't take much to put them in line. At least we will get a taste of what we have been dishing out to the rest of the world... unlike them however, we deserve it. History has shown that the dominant culture will only see the folly of its ways when the very survival of it comes into question. That day is rapidly approaching for us Americans. May mankind have mercy on our souls.

Most Americans seem intensely baffled by what is happening the realm of economics. This no doubt stems from our comical education system and our collective proclivity towards willful ignorance. Luckily I recently found a great little story that does a marvelous job of explaining what the government is doing with the bailout, so enjoy-

Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and
announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys
for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it! The man now announce d that he would buy monkeys at $50 each! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would buy on his behalf. In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.' The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion dollars.

They never saw the man or his assistant again, only
lots and lots of monkeys!

Now you have a better understanding of how the
WALL STREET BAILOUT PLAN WILL WORK !!!!

Ain't that a kick in the head

Athens- Protesters, described as mostly students, were seen smashing the glass doors of a Citibank, throwing a metal barricade at police lined up along a street and scuffling with police wearing white helmets.

Suicide bombing in Kirkuk kills scores and indicates an increase to the sectarian strife over control of the pivotal northern city.

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — The commander of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet expressed doubt Friday about the wisdom of launching attacks against Somali pirates on land — a proposal the U.S. is circulating to the U.N. Security Council.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience…we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. -Ike (1961)

Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place. -Noam Chompsky (1970)

In this brave new world the companies that arm our armies actually create the conflicts in much the way Nike supports sports. A system of lucrative crises profiteering has made all form of human suffering extremely appealing to the hardcore capitalist. Lockheed Martin now has become so vertically integrated that it literally makes the bombs that blow up buildings, owns a contracting firm to rebuild them, and runs a business to staff those buildings. The contracts that are signed with the American Military-Disaster complex are frequently no bid contracts that are guarenteed a profit (a process called cost plus which means that you just show how much you spend and they give you a certain percentage more). Such companies are being openly funded through massive billion dollar contracts in which the US Treasury cuts them a blank check, without any regard to efficiency, cost or even economic logic. Everything from a hurricane, to a war, to an earthquake is an economic boom if your business needs large government handouts to keep those stock prices high. The money pledged for Tsunami relief in 2004 went almost entirely to largescale Multinational Corporations focusing on developing new Tourism resorts in the recentely cleared beaches of Thailand and Sri Lanka, and various mineral and gas reserves in Indonesia; as well as many other projects that benefited business. In certain places people openly stated that the aid wasn't helping, but in fact, hurting them. This sort of ruthless exploitation and abuse frequentely leads to armed resistance, which is rapidly becoming more and more appealing than living a life of desperation and poverty under the twin rule of corrupt or coerced governments and the omnipresent Multinationals. All over the world groups too numerous to list have sprung up in response to the economic hopelessness of their situation and injustice of the system into which they are being led.

The closing of almost half of Iraqi factories by the US in a country where the majority of men have military training seems almost too demented to fathom. Unless of course you own stock in Blackwater or KBR, both of which provide $900 dollar a day mercenaries to protect the various companies contracted to rebuild Iraq. Even though rebuilding all that we destroyed in Iraq has been made almost entirely impossible because of the violence, business in the Green Zone never missed a beat. Its a savage and violent way of life that American and her Allies project upon the masses of the world. Death and destruction are not strangers to mankind, indeed they are our perential companions. The ruthless efficacy of the modern machine that makes and profits off it is just becoming more aggressive and confident. After what they have gotten away with so far, it would be foolish from a purely profit based perspective to change course.

Snapshots of history

The Surreal Tapestry

Things are certainly complex, and the web of wild weirdness seems only to be growing with each spin of the planet. The three cities pictured above are about as different as they could be, but they are all part of the network of human habitation that is coming to define earth. We stop rivers, blow up mountains, build bridges and construct massive cities to hold the incomprehensibly huge population that we have managed to produce. An insular species, we seem far more concerned with the other humans than about much else, even our own environment. This might have something to do with the pervasive struggle for land, but it might be something deeper. That human intelligence was derived and created not to deal with our sensory world, but with the minds of our fellow humans, which can be complex minefields of opinions, motivations and ambitions. One theorist (Geoffrey Miller) has posed the perspective that the reason the human brain evolved into this immensely powerful organ is because sexual selection favored the most intelligent specimens, which over time rendered a mind that could produce mentalities, realities and just anything else we can think of (literally). The human mind has swaggered onto the stage of evolutionary history like a megalomaniac Titan, annihilating species and altering landscapes en masse because it seems beneficial to us to do so. Having said all this we are still just a funky species of mammals whose only real claim to fame is our appetite for destruction, agriculture and making very complex tools to assist in our endeavors, which when looked at objectively doesn't really amount to much. No matter how serious we take ourselves and how much we hoot and holler, the surreal tapestry that we bipeds have weaved in our world is a perceptual poltergeist created for our own entertainment and survival. Of course thinking of yourself as some strange growth that came from bacteria ages past isn't a very romantic perspective, and it doesn't leave much room for our treasured notions of individuality and spiritual significance. All the wars we wage, the economic madness we manifest, the triumph and terror that is modern mans struggle with himself, it is all just an elaborate existential exhibition of ourselves. So we might as well sing and dance.
"We are like pygmies lost in a maze of haze. We are not at war, we are having a nervous breakdown,again." -HST
"It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their real import or value." -Hegel

Economics

“Even using the nuclear option of guaranteeing everything, providing unlimited liquidity, nationalising the banks, making clear that nobody of importance is going to be allowed to fail, even that has not helped. We are reaching a breaking point, frankly.” He [Nouriel Roubini] believes governments will have to come up with an even bigger international rescue, and that the US is facing “multi-year economic stagnation”.

The bond that binds us, economic interaction, is breaking down on a large scale and is causing many a human much confusion. The orgiastic days of yore when endless profits and trust in the system seem to be gone. How it will all work out is any ones guess. The economic slump could well be the beginning of an avalanche that sees the fundamental and complete collapse of the bourgeois mode of production. If this were to come to pass, the implications are endless to the average life of those who have gotten rather accustomed to regular meals and the ability to recieve payment for their work. Its an interesting time, of that much we can be certain.

Sublimely Savage

Some extracts from the world-
"Oil is now highly correlated with the stock market," said Clarence Chu, a trader with market maker Hudson Capital Energy in Singapore. "People are looking to the Dow for sentiment on the economy."
Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations.
Cities that have suffered unrest before, such as Detroit, Chicago, Oakland and Philadelphia, will have extra police deployed.
In Oakland, the police will deploy extra units trained in riot control, as well as extra traffic police, and even put SWAT teams on standby.
“Are we anticipating it will be a riot situation? No. But will we be prepared if it goes awry? Yes,” said Jeff Thomason, spokesman for the Oakland Police Department.

War

"It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow too fond of it."
-Robert E. Lee
"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."
-George Bernard Shaw
So here we sit, 6 billion plus strong just hanging out on planet earth eyeballing each other with curiosity and suspicion. Amidst the physical necessitates for our continued in habitation/occupation of the earth we have also constructed realities, or more accurately perspectives, that justify the various behavior we must engage in to do the various things we do. What is commonly called morality is simply what a group collectively agree upon as socially acceptable. A peoples ability to use morality as a weapon against its foes is generally what separates the rulers from the ruled. Chief Calgacus denounced the morality of the might makes right logic over 2,000 years ago in the brilliant observation that: "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace." It may seem a distant and uncertain reality to those on the side of the presently dominant culture, but to those under threat from our bellicose armies that level whole countries when they are unleashed upon the world is always near. The long term explanation for why the West can deploy divisions and bomb at will the globe over is primarily the we have done it so we can do it. Our whole Civilization is based on conquest, killing and consumption; no amount of idealism can ever hide that fact. So it seems rather obvious that the sustaining of our system predicates violence on a large scale. Those who speak of humanitarianism and philanthropy are childlike in their naive belief that one can alter the ruthless rules of a centuries old contest to see who can exert the most influence upon the societies of humans. The death toll is already incalculable and grows every day. Every Palestinian shot, every Iraqi blown up, every African that starves to death and all the others who face death on a daily basis know that this world is at war. The pressures from our presence seems to make this natural antagonism an ordeal from whence there is no escape. As our world grows so does our capacity for slaughter and organized violence. The sad truth is that killing for whatever reason the day provides is one of the cornerstones of our civilization, and as long as we keep on the path that we have been traveling down for the past few centuries their is no extricating ourselves from the cycle of violence and aggression that permeates our world.
Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset Because they didn't know better, they called it 'civilization,' when it was part of their slavery -Tacitus

Amicorum sunt communia omnia

"Amicorum sunt communia omnia." -Greek Proverb
Friends hold all things in common.

To live a life above the strife
existence devoid of senseless resistance
can one be so free in this crazy society?
hard to imagine that the commune even happens
from the kibbutz to the tribes to all people with communal lives
outside the madness of the main hive where the robots strive to stay alive
In the ages many sages chose to walk away from the charade
a hard path, but nothing really lasts
so why not take a stroll in tune with the commune?
as the social weather grows dark and the situation is stark
the crashing of the everlasting assault by the millions
can abate if you don't hesitate to move to your own grove
take a place and make it your own sacred space
in the land of careless excess and abandon
it's hard to be sure of where you are standing
but if you take the time and rearrange your mind
you too can join with nature and commune with the sublime

This Week

This last week was an interesting one. Like a colossal chessboard with all the pieces in play the tangled web of our modern world forms a mosaic of breathtaking proportions. The hyper consumers are seeing their world of excess fray at its edges whilst the rest reel and squeal under the oppressive authority of the former. People on both sides of the divide are beginning to perceive the impermanence of the status quo and dreaming desperately about what shall come next. The omnipotent and uncompromising environment of our earth is no longer the endlessly exploitable ally that we have grown so accustomed to, and is now reacting to our flurry of activity. In the flowing phantasmagoria that is our collective reality the scientific proverb that energy can neither be created nor destroyed seems perfectly personified in our actions. Although the game is far along, its outcome remains undefined as the generations break upon the rocks of ruthless reality. Still we seem forever in the gentle embrace of the universe which holds us with the loving arms of an eternal mother.
Asia- India and Pakistan both suffer from the temerity of terrorists. Playing people like a microphone, as the bodies pile up, the meaning of their death becomes nothing but a continuation of the cacaphony of senseless human suffering that has sadly been the history of our species. A massive attack upon the Marriott hotel in Islamabad and a story that the Pakistani military fired upon US helicopters that entered its airspace from Afghanistan shows that the situation is escalating daily. The density of population that Asia has attained has become a liability that seems to alter all aspects of inhabitation. The incalcubale scope of what is occuring in this vast scene makes the rest of humanity pale in comparison. In China a large scale tainted milk scandal once more undermines the ruling Communist Party (Four children have died and about 13,000 remain in hospital). The 1.2 billion Chinese are starting to accert their right to think on an ever increasing scale; as often happens with the growth of a powerful middle class. North Korea has commenced working on its nuclear program again despite promises to stop. Rumors are once more circulating of Iran efforts to become a nuclear power, with a report claiming that they have altered a ballistic missle to carry a nuclear payload.

Europe- As the Large Hadron Collider built by CERN runs its tests meant to ascertain the building blocks of nature it seems as though the Old Country is becoming an island of introspection with its low birth rates, high standard of livng and complex history. Since Nato is still actively involved in various conflicts Europe remains very much on the side of the US led world order.

North America- The recently conquered continents people spend another week witnessing the sad spectacle that has become the campaign for president. Cynicism and idealism fuse into one indistinguishable mass with the American public tragically misinformed and manipulated personify the problems and folly of our approach to life. Deepening economic turmoil leads to the largest governmental intervention in the market seen since the Depression. As the Americans continue to export the orthodoxy of Friedman style capitalism upon much of the rest of the planet, the hypocracy is reaching astral heights. Meanwhile, the investment bank model, that has been a cornerstone of Wallstreet for decades is now being abandoned en masse with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley both closing shop and switching over to being a regular bank. In a telling move the short selling of stock on about 800 financial institutions was banned until October 2nd, showing the severity of the crises now taking hold at the nexus of the modern market economy.

South America- The political passion that has long distinguished this mixed and virulent land as a poeticly painful performance is in full swing. Economic trouble when added the centuries old conflict between land owner and peasant, have and have not, continues to define the mentality of Latin America. Like a symphony of sweet surrender and bitter struggle the region continues to be a shinning example of the resiliance of hope against our cold and cruel age of excess and exploitation.

Africa- MEND has launched an all out assault against the oil industry in the Niger Delta that promises to prevent a large portion the areas petroleum to ever reach the lucrative markets of the industrialized world. Mbeki was deposed as South Africa's president leaving the leadership of the country in flux. The birthplace of mankind struggles under the intervention of the outside world to reap the land of resources.

Our Week World

So I've concluded that as much fun as my random ramblings are for myself, they serve very little purpose for others. Thus have I decided to start posting a weekly report to give people a little taste of what transpires on the world stage whilst we mumble, bumble and stumble through the perennial 7 day cycle. Your lifespan will consist of approximately 650,000 hours, which breaks down to a little under 4,000 weeks. This number when compared with the length of human history, or the existence of our lovely little planet Earth, really isn't all that much. Sadly our subatomic structure, for some unknown reason, doesn't like sticking together for any longer. There are many ways to deal with the infinitesimal nature of our existence, the most effective seems to be the grandiose madness of organized activity. This can include just about every aspect of human society. From warfare to religion to procreation and economic activity, it all distracts remarkably well. I myself love to take in the serendipitous show, primarily because it is the only show in town worth watching in my opinion. Some people call it cruel, savage, amazing, complex and a lot of other adjectives; I just see it as breathtakingly beautiful. All those who complain about it remind me of all those art critics that can't produce a damn thing on their own yet feel justified criticizing the work of others. I have an immense amount of empathy for people, but at the same time I acknowledge that this is the path we have collectively chosen to walk down and as a result we have the modern world. I'm the first to admit that the performance isn't what many of the actors want it to be, but the cast generally doesn't write the script. As much fun as imagination and small scale entertainment is, I have yet to find the equal of the main stage. Just as in any performance, you shouldn't take the actors too seriously for the parts they play, it is just their way and given enough time it all becomes OK. The performance has been going of for several thousand years and the story is really starting to get good, so without further ado, allow me to inform you-
Americas- Political crises in Bolivia threatens to spiral out of control. President Morales' economic plan to redistribute the income generated from natural gas to his poor constituency leads to clashes. Wealthy elites of the 4 richest provinces threaten to secede if forced to share revenues with the poor native majority. In a related development Bolivia and the US have each expelled each others diplomats as tensions rise. Hugo Chavez has followed suit by expelling the US ambassador there and threatening all manner of economic and military retaliation if the US tries to interfere with Bolivian politics. Bolivia is the poorest country and the one with the largest percentage of Amerindians on the continent; it also has a tradition of having the shortest lived governments in the region (which is saying something). The battle is primarily over a desire to us the countries massive natural gas reserves to benefit the countries impoverished population, which is completely the opposite of the model used since conquest by the Spanish in 1533.
Asia- With the Occupation of Iraq and Palestine continuing, the war in Afghanistan escalating and neighboring Pakistan looking dangerously close to full scale civil war, South West Asia looks primed for a regional war. Iran's continued efforts to pursue an independent course in the middle of the US led attempt to establish military dominance, when added to newly confident Russia asserting itself in the area, threat of a full scale bloodbath seems far less like a possibility and much more like a certainty. India has also been dealing with a rise in bomb attacks and continued tension in Kashmir. Kim Jong Il of North Korea has apparently had a stroke which raises the issue of what will happen when the nuclear armed and wildly independent country whose government is based as much on a cult of personality as it is any Marxist ideology finds itself without a leader. In short, just another week in Asia.
Africa- It appears that MEND (movement for the emancipation of the Niger Delta) has decided to shun peace talks with the central government and once again take its war to the various corporations sucking up oil. Pressure has been increasing upon Robert Mugabe to start sharing some power. His continued ability to maintain control of the country amid the highest inflation rates in the world (11.2 million percent), opposition from every other country, and a record of human rights violations is a testament to the brute force his regime can exert upon its own people. This sets a crucial standard as countries all over Africa (Sudan being one of them) begin to use violence as an acceptable means of keeping power amid huge epidemics of disease and countless rebel movements.
North America- Aside from a Hurricane and the continued decline of the economy, US citizens spent more time concerned over their coming election. Both sides have now announced VP's and are launching all out media blitz's meant to mold the malleable minds of Americans to their various schemes, a large number of which are nothing but demagogic lies meant to mobilize people upon knee-jerk emotional responses to problems which the leaders have no real desire or ability to solve. Much of the rest of the world looks on with astonishment and terror as our two potential leaders each assert their ability to run not only this country, but also police the planet.

stole soul

So we born so we die
yet everything's copacetic
only the dreamers ask why
so no need to be apathetic

As far as I can see
we are all born free
yet we still enslave our brain
making existence simple and plain

for when I cast my gaze at life
behold a dramatic exercise in fantasy
a distaste for pain yet much strife
no easy escape through simplicity

As difficult as the path may seem
this journey seems to make me wise
just enough hope to allow me to dream
being a visionary through the sea of lies

Don't talk to me of resistance
that just leads to mass persistence
and has always been the primary basis
for our brutally cruel mind numbing stasis

Opposition just lead to more insanity
in this game we affectionately call humanity
Changing our complicated ways is so very hard
but how many times we gunna play the same card?

I think we are finally approaching the brink
becomes painfully clear no matter what we think
happiness and balance are the two things we can't
make manifest even if we try our best with the rant

Proverbs

In our over verbalized age it is a pleasure to hear succinct truth expressed in the refined language of brilliance. Here are some great proverbs from Zen Masters, followed by some Indigenous ones.

A samurai once asked Zen Master Hakuin where he would go after he died. Hakuin answered 'How am I supposed to know?'
'How do you not know? You're a Zen master!' exclaimed the samurai.
'Yes, but not a dead one,' Hakuin answered.
Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish your opinions.
If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
In the landscape of spring, there is neither better nor worse. The flowering branches grow naturally, some long, some short.
It takes a wise man to learn from his mistakes, but an even wiser man to learn from others.
Knock on the sky and Listen to the sound.
The ten thousand questions are one question. If you cut through the one question, then the ten thousand questions disappear.
The tighter you squeeze the less you have.
The ways to the One are as many as the lives of men.
Though the bamboo forest is dense, water flows through it freely.
To do a certain kind of thing, you have to be a certain kind of person.
To follow the path, look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.
To know that there is nothing to know, and to grieve that it is so difficult to communicate this "nothing to know" to others - this is the life of Zen.
When the pupil is ready to learn, a teacher will appear.
When you reach the top, keep climbing.
Why do you ask questions? If you already knew the flame was fire then the meal was cooked a long time ago.
I only know a snowflake cannot exist in a storm of fire.
A weed is a plant whose virtues are only waiting to be discovered.
Women may spend their whole lives looking for true love. If you wish for true love, learn to love yourself.
You do not wait for fulfilment, but brace yourself for failure.
A river too pure, yields no fish.
At first, I saw mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers. Then, I saw mountains were not mountains and rivers were not rivers. Finally, I see mountains again as mountains, and rivers again as rivers.
Zen students must learn to waste time conscientiously.
No yesterday, no tomorrow, and no today - Sheng-ts'an
If the problem has a solution, worrying is pointless, in the end the problem will be solved. If the problem has no solution, there is no reason to worry, because it can't be solved.
"Our first teacher is our own heart." Cheyenne
"If a man is as wise as a serpent, he can afford to be as harmless as a dove" Cheyenne
"All who have died are equal." Comanche
"Listen or your tongue will keep you deaf. " Cree
"The one who tells the stories rules the world." Hopi
"We will be known forever by the tracks we leave." Dakota
"The bird who has eaten cannot fly with the bird that is hungry." Omaha
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, Wisdom is of the future." Lumbee
"We are all one child spinning through Mother Sky." Shawnee
"Lose your temper and you lose a friend; lie and you lose yourself." Hopi
"It's impossible to awaken a man who is pretending to be asleep." Navajo
"You cannot see the future with tears in your eyes." Navajo

Check it Out

After reflecting upon my last blog, I realized that the alternative to being cornered in our society is not as clear for most as it is for me; so I shall elaborate. Beholding the world of the humans in its expansive insanity and brutality requires a complete commitment to reality and what it stands for- survival. It has gone totally out of fashion lately to admit that the survival of our species, and the world that provides everything it consumes, is our primary concern and operates totally independent of any petty morality. We've inherited many antiquated concepts that accumulated over the course of our journey to the present that are utterly useless in terms of our present condition. I firmly believe that if mankind is going to accomplish anything beyond what we have thus far it is going to require a streamlined version of what is presently called humanity. All the self indulgent megalomaniac nonsense that we expend so much of our energy on will very soon become a luxury we can no longer afford. My advice is simple, learn as much as you can and make the most of your time here. Life is a canvas upon which our actions paint pictures. The thoughtful and committed human living up to his or her full glory is a beautiful thing, and the only path worth walking in my opinion. If such is how you choose to roll, when your present manifestation is over you will have left behind a piece of inspirational art that furthers the cause of life in the infinite expanse of the universe.
"It's impossible to awaken a man who is pretending to be asleep."
"You cannot see the future with tears in your eyes."
Navajo Proverbs

Cornered

"To protest in the name of morality against 'excesses' or 'abuses' is an error that hints at active complicity. There are no 'abuses' or 'excesses' here, simply an all pervasive system." -Simone de Beauvoir
As my knowledge of the system increases with my careful study the scale, scope and organization becomes intoxicating in its complexity. People spend whole lifetimes absorbed in the minutest aspects of our complicated world, still not even exhausting that one field of study. This leads to a sectarian society in which many people are on completely different but parallel paths, all under the umbrella of the system. We all find our little corner to inhabit and operate within; which in order to do so we must tacitly embrace the order which permits and facilitates it. The reality of this situation is in no way more clearly demonstrated than in the fact that the political and corporate powers that rule this land need never justify their actions in any rational format. We all know, on some level, where this fantastic wealth that creates our little corners comes from, and thus can only criticize individual aspects that we consider 'immoral' and never the system which neccesitates it. This allows people to not take that virtually impossible mental jump from 'I want change' to 'I will change'. Especially when one realizes in horror that any direct action to oppose the beast which you have found ruling your life makes you the enemy of virtually everyone you know. Their is a way out, but not through ideology or compromise. In a compromise between good and evil only evil can ever benefit. What is 'evil' you might ask- that which destroys life. Don't be afraid when confronted with the monolithic power of the herd, for it is always ready to change course, but the prerequisite is to come out of our little corners and forsake them.
"There are no chains of houses; there are no crowds of men. The colossal diagram of streets and houses is an illusion, the opium dream of a speculative builder. Each of these men is supremely solitary and supremely important to himself. Each of these houses stands in the centre of the world." --G. K. Chesterton

Reality

It has become remarkably popular lately to deny the existence of an objective reality independent of individual human perspective. This is probably the result of academia and politics, both of which have been so self centered that they find it possible to postulate just about anything. They certainly can't be entirely to blame, because they merely create the path, it is the rest of humanity that must tacitly accept it. Reality is not something that can be denied ad infinitum however. The current trend of consuming more than you produce and polluting to an extent that makes our existence untenable are rather glaring testaments to realities uncompromising nature. Science does its best to deal in terms of objective reality, and the testing of theories through the crucible of what is real has made it advance. The social sciences (a hilarious oxymoron) and political thought (another) has operated in a mental void in which reality need not apply. Politicians make incredibly absurd claims that are so inherently contradictory that even questioning their logic requires one to enter that void in which reality and the human facility that detects it, logic, simply can't exist. The fallacies that belch out of the brain factories are a little more difficult to detect, not because they are any less ridiculous, merely because they use more words and arguments so daft that it takes years of expensive training to even consider them as conceivably true. The people of the world seem to have been caught hook, line and sinker in this imbecilic charade. When a person drowns it is because they are forced underwater so long that in panic their brain forces them to breath the water in the desperate assumption that it is in fact air; with the predictable result of death. Much in the same fashion when people are surrounded by an endless ocean of falsities they eventually, out of desperation or depravity, begin to swallow, with the predictable result. I personally am a lifelong fan of reality because it is the only path to any solution to a problem. Trying to solve anything when you fail to perceive the intrinsic nature of the problem is impossible, and yet that is how we are currently going about it. All the ideology, faith and ambition in the world won't cure a single significant problem facing us humans. It's scary out here in reality, no hiding that fact, but things are only going to get worse if people remain willfully ignorant or delusional. Here are some of my favorite quotes on reality by some other humans-
"I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal."
-Groucho Marx
"How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality."
-Norman Douglas
"Humankind cannot stand very much reality."
-T. S. Eliot
"When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality."
-Henry David Thoreau
"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."
-Martin Luther King Jr.

Traveling

"Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
As I return from my travels in Brazil I feel as though my mind has been gorged after near starvation. The capacity of the human mind to perceive and the heart to love are never so fully exercised as when one leaves all familiarity behind and ventures forth into the unknown. It's almost as if one can transcend your earthly coil through the nirvana of a reality separate from the one you've grown accustomed to. When one goes down the path of the wanderer you are taking a course in life taught by the world, and it is a teacher that never fails. That which I learned on this trip is difficult to corner with words. The immensity of the experience makes one drunk with thought and as a result fills the mind with more than can be processed. It is a series of moments that have fused together and yet maintain a particular place in ones memories. I'm thinking of the kites flying high above favelas held by children whose existence is painful and precarious, yet they smile. I remember dancing in new ways and having people relish my attempts and laughingly tell me "you dance well for a gringo" (which is like telling a deaf man he hears well). Images of the endless skyline of Sao Paulo, an impenetrably deep jungle, rolling hills in Minas Gerais and the perfect beaches of Rio de Janeiro are all separate things held by my mind in one special thought. As much as I like to study the world academically, it is this personal perception that makes it all real and breathtaking. The individual human experience is nothing but a journey through space and time, thus does travel fulfill so much of our being.
"Who lives sees much. Who travels sees more." ~ Arab proverb

5 to 1

Although Americans are docile and tamed, we'd do well to remember that some humans don't take being buggered kindly. These two pictures were taken this last week. The first was in Chile, the second in Korea. I like it when people go out into the streets and tangle with armored authority, reminds me that unlike Americans, large swaths of humanity have yet to be domesticated by the system; maybe they never will be. Now the fact that we are on the winning side of a pretty darn gruesome and protracted war for economic dominance makes it easy, convenient and even logical not to complain in any effective or dangerous way; this I understand. National, racial and class boundaries help the fortunate not feel guilty, but it doesn't change the nature of what is going on globally and that lots of people aren't down with the program.
"Who can protest and does not, is an accomplice in the act."
-The Talmud

Music

"Music is Magic. Magic is Life"- Jimi Hendrix's last lyrics
Our world has become a full blown battlefield for the fate of the human race. Ti's a vicious and complex conflict that is what we live, whether we embrace or hide from it. Thus is it that in said conflict their are many weapons and fronts where the struggle rages. Being but singular vulnerable hominids, this is naturally a very terrifying state of affairs, such is our reality in this unprecedented year of 2008 Anno Domini. As the shots are fired all around us in a dizzying display of passion and power there is one dimension to this conflict in which we can take triumphant refuge and its presence is the inspiration of mankind; it's called music. I would have never made it to this moment to write these words without its transcendent glory to save me from myself. It is the soundtrack that records the tribulations of the human soul as it traverses the sordid madness of history. It allows us to dance in an age of despair, death and desire. It turns words from just commonplace necessities into mind blowing beatitudes that guide us on our different and identical journeys upon Earth. It is the most subversive force in an age of unbridled tyranny and control; constantly reminding us of a deeper vein in the human experience. In this era when they try to tell us how orderly and controlled the world should be, we must forever remember the wild thing that is MUSIC- and the indestructible and inexplicable beauty it incarnates.
"Open are the doors to the Deathless
to those with ears.
Let them show their conviction " -Lord Buddha

The 4th

"America is a mistake, a giant mistake." -Sigmund Freud

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between" -Oscar Wilde

Not having an intellect to match those two geniuses above I can't make such a succinct and emphatic statement about my country, the United State of America, so I'll just do what I do know- writing a rambling rant. One thing is for sure though about Americans, we are a wild and emmotional bunch that really doesn't give a flying fuck what the rest of the world thinks about us or our behavior. We are also unintentionally honest- like the fact that the only logical way for us to celebrate our Country is eating bad food and blowing shit up. If it feels good and doesn't require too much effort do it, pretty much our modus operandi. It looks like hard times ahead for this nation of aggressive adventurers, but such in the forge from which all greatness has always emerged. I personally blame the baby boomers and their incomprehensibly stupid behavior in virtually every single aspect of national affairs. They amazingly managed to mismanage the most unprecedented advantage that any people has ever had, and so successfully soil the American ideal that it is now nothing but an incarnation of hypocrisy. Really reminds me of the last generation of Romans before Alaric sacked Rome and proved just how pathetically far they had fallen. Oh well, Sic transit gloria mundi. Now I'm no nationalist, but damn did we have it all set up so perfectly! We could have done just about anything we wanted with the world from helping and uniting humanity to completely annihilating it- and this lame ass shitstorm of opportunistic greed is all we did. God damn what a bummer! Aside from baby boomers I also blame excessive public education for taking what was once a nation of rabid individualists and turning them into the most self serving servile chauvinistic ignorant mob of maniacs the world has seen; or at least that I can think of right now. Having said all that negative shit, there are still some reasons to not count us out: 1) We have a lot of minorities in this country that seem to be a lot more capable and willing to do something with their lives other than get progressively fatter and stupider (roughly 100 million out of 300 million). 2) Just cause one Generation was a bunch of fuck ups doesn't necessarily mean all subsequent ones are going to be the same way (although that is sort of how it generally works). 3) People are voting less and less which proves that on some level we aren't completely unaware of what's going on. 4) With energy shortages looming ominously on the horizon effective entertainment might become unaffordable and consequently make Americans start using their brains again, if indeed any grey matter worth utilizing remains. 5) The rich might have gone too far this time in their abuse of the American worker, who just might retaliate with a ferocity that no one ever expected as things get progressively worse economically.
Sorry, that's the only positive points I can think of so here's another quote-

"Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea."

A lesson from History

"There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it." -William S. Burroughs
That incandescent quote cuts right to core of the modern quest for freedom. If the international market economy, which is undeniably the only real ruler for all of earths people, has made it impossible to be free, then why do we still insist on thinking it so important? Americans have always loved pretty words, actually living in accordance with the principles they represent- not so much. Hypocrisy took hold in this country to such an extent that we don't know what that word means either; its simply too much of our national character for most Americans to even identify. I find this particularly interesting from a historical perspective because every other successful Empire I can think of embraced the reality of their culture with unabashed pride and enthusiasm. The Mongols and Romans made no secret of their ambition to kick the shit out of anyone who stood in their way; so what's our deal? I think the answer lay buried a few thousand years back in an often discussed but rarely understood place and time- 5th Century Athens. Essentially the Greeks had fought off the massive Persian Army after being almost completely conquered in one of the most epically awesome conflicts in History. At this juncture the Athenians kept pursuing the war to reclaim all Hellenic territories that had been conquered. All the Greek city-states of the Aegean formed the Delian league, under Athenian leadership, to liberate their fellow Greeks. Now, most of the small members couldn't afford to field ships of their own and were often incapable of contributing any significant numbers of troops. So what they ended up doing was just paying Athens to do both, which it happily did because Athens was a hardcore militaristic Democracy with the largest navy and plenty of people to send off to war. Well, eventually the Persian threat was pretty much over and people sort of began to wonder why Athens still insisted on exacted tribute from all the Delian League members, and so some decided to stop paying. Well, the Boule(βουλή)decided that they didn't want to give up their dominate position and thus voted to punish those that tried to secede. Now the Boule was a lot like the House of Representatives, except that the members were randomly selected from the 10 different tribes of Athens. They didn't necessarily think of themselves as Imperialists, but that didn't mean that in essence that wasn't exactly what they were doing. They thought that their democratic ideals and visibly superior culture meant that it was somehow different when they did essentially the same things that they had denounced the Persians for only a short time before. Long story short the Spartans called shenanigans and after a protracted war put them in their place. If you can't see the parallels between this first recorded experiment with democracy and our own circumstance then I'm truly amazed you can bear the smell, because you must have your head firmly and deeply located up your own ass.

Ron Paul: Who Owns You (Narrated By George Carlin)

George Carlin was one of the good ones, one of the last of an almost extinct breed.

Sonnet for the Situation

So much hope and pain these days
billions of humans struggling with it all
in billions of different and identical ways
desperately hoping that we won't see the fall

the descent from decadence to complete desolation
seems to me that we wont have long to wait
untill this warrior nation is forced into contemplation
how did we become such a twisted sad state

We who once reached for the stars
are now demented killers and conquerers
our pathetic youth, materialists filling bars
still something in our sad souls still stirs

Idealism runs stong in our veins
even if it's left our conscious brains

the leaders lead, the fools follow, the thinkers recoil in horror
worry not about the future, because their can always be more
after all this age is strange, but the only constant is change

Petrol Prices

"Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so."

My goodness how people love to bitch about changes in the Market. I suppose if you were fundamentally ignorant of almost every single aspect of the economic activity of the world complaining is a lot easier than becoming informed. Being the helpful current affairs junky that I am, I have decided to break it down nice and simple like for you all. So there are these companies that retrieve, distribute and sell petroleum right? And they do this for profit. The largest companies are state-owned operations like Saudi Aramco and Petrobras, but the ones we Americans deal with the most are multinational companies. You see if state run companies ever tried the shady shit that the multinationals did it would be very obvious who could hold accountable. So what we see in the unprecedented rise in the per-barrel price of oil is almost entirely the work of the big five- Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron Texaco and Conoco Phillips. Now these corporations would also be able to be held accountable if they did anything too blatant to raise prices, but they are hardcore capitalists, and thus very wily. They know for a fact that the end of easily available oil is going to, in time, completely eliminate the market for their good and service. Consequently they are seeing that they get top dollar while the demand lasts. The occupation of Iraq, the political tensions with Iran and Venezuela, and MEND's continued actions in the Niger Delta have all played completely into their desire to get higher profits than any corporations in the history of Capitalism. So it really isn't that complicated, and as a result could be fixed relatively easily if the American consumer was keener on flexing its economic muscle than the traditional brainless bitching. As much as they destory the world and harm its inhabitants, I can't even really blame the oil companies for doing what corporations are designed to do- make money. Is it their fault that poor countries governments don't stop them and Western consumers are subserviant idiots being led by corrupt opportunistic leaders? I personally would argue that as much as they profit from these situations, it wasn't they that created them (although they played a large part).

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." -Marcus Aurelius

The Mighty Market

"When a man moves away from nature his heart becomes hard."

Allow me to say, in the parlance of our times, that shit is getting wild and looks to be getting even more so in the very near future. The thing we got going here called civilization looks as though it will collapse under its own weight and crush us all. This is largely the result of unbridled use of resources over the past 200 years. In that time the worlds population has more than tripled and our race has become integrated into one mammoth entity commonly called the Market. People and products flow all over the place in a network so complex and fluid that no one really knows how it all works. It has in a few generations fundamentally altered just about every single facet of our existence. In many ways it has helped us all learn more about the different cultures and even done a great deal to increase our knowledge of everything from Astrophysics to Zoology. There is one minor problem to all this however, and that is that we only have one planet to populate, and that being done, we seem incapable of stopping, even when it becomes glaringly obvious that we don't have enough to go around anymore. Our traditional checks of war, famine and plague have all been somewhat neutralized by America's complete military dominance, improved agricultural technology and amazing medicines. We love to exhibit these advances as proof of our spectacular progress. Unfortunately the operating of this Market is based almost entirely upon the affordable availability of one resource- petroleum. This fueled the madness that was the 20th Century and is responsible for the world in which we live. It is an undeniable fact that almost all the easy oil has been gotten, and that the costs associated with extracting what is left will be a huge economic burden. Now oil prices don't only affect transportation, but also food production which is largely dependent upon petroleum based fertilizers. Long story short, the 60 years of economic growth and relative peace since WWII is going to come to an abrupt end. Starvation will rip through the third world like a hurricane and will sweep away whatever semblance of authority there was. The wealthy nations of the world will find that all their capital doesn't amount to anything when their is no fuel to propel their economies. The standard of living will plumet and social unrest will be bound to follow. In such an environment it isn't hard to believe that warfare will return with a vengence as the 6.5 billion people on earth fight tooth and nail. This time not for religion, race or state, but purely for survival. Morality has always been the providence of peace, and naturally leaves the stage as soon as Aries arrives. So here we will be with all these weapons and not enough stuff for everyone... The gears of history have always been lubricated by blood, and I fear that the Market may very well soon require unprecedented amounts to keep functioning. I guess it just wasn't in the cards for us to be able to cooperate enough to make this whole society thing work in the long run; what a bummer for us. The leaders of the G8 recently convened to work towards lowering the price of oil to ensure their economic viability- what a bunch of myopic demented dipshitsOf course nobody wants to be the person to say that the party has to stop, especially when nobody knows how to stop. The G8 is really just a gang of heartless addicts that are so profoundly materialistic that they care about nothing except their GDP. It is going to be one hell of a show, of that much at least we can be certain. All the tamed and trained people in wealthy countries are going to find going cold turkey rough going. At the very most we have a decade or two before all this goes down. So my advice is to get used to living off what your local area can produce, get used to no electricity, and certainly don't have any children.

wonderfully wild world

How wonderfully wild the world is becoming. Almost seems like we are heading into a different part of the universe and it is affecting all of us. Tis one hell of a ride deep down inside this thing in which we all must abide. All on this planet with no were to go except crazy or space. We wrestle with ourselves and each other as our little blue planet gracefully dances through our celestial stage with the casual perfection that is natures trademark. The utter indifference of the universe to our self obsession is a constant reminder of where we come from and what we are a part of. I have this sneaking suspicion that we are about to become much more aware of our own insignificance cosmically and that this may very well provide the perfect opportunity for us to exchange our desire to dominate for survival and discovery. All that we can be relatively certain of is the impermanence of our entire species. We are here, have been for a little while, and some day we will be gone; so what are we going to do with the time and place we were given? If we were to take the earth as a blank canvas, I must confess we have made a pretty horrendous mess of it so far. Still, many layers of paint can be applied in an attempt to rescue this piece of art from aimless barbarity. I can't even pretend to have a preference about what happens, the paint stokes fall where they will. Its so brutally beautiful and yet serenely stupid that you can't help but love it. Its a riddle that will drive you crazy with consciousness, but can also be really funny if you only let it. Anyway, it wouldn't be as majestic and mysterious if it all actually had an explanation. Que sera sera. Whatever will be will be, the futures not ours to see. Que sera sera.

May Day

"The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession."
-Mark Twain
The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.
-Mikhail Bakunin
The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society. -Emma Goldman
"It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute." -Buenaventura Durruti

As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future, that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness!
-Leon Trotsky
Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
Rosa Luxemburg

Oh how we have tried and failed to free ourselves from the modern world of use and abuse. How many barricades have been sanctified by the passionate blood of workers who preferred to die in the streets rather than let their life be taken by the endless exploitation. And how many times have we thought that we were finally being led out of Egypt only to validate Camus' cynical but thus far true statement- "Every revolutionary ends up as an oppressor or a heretic". Is it destined to be like this forever? People willingly donning their chains and licking the whip for all their days in the desperate hope that it will get better, someday? Makes me wonder if maybe humanity has been tripping on power too long to give up the habit cold turkey and form a society that works for everyone. I remain somewhat optimistic that sooner or later enough people are going to get desperate enough to try some truly radical ideas. Have no clue what that will consist of, but in the unfolding of time, their are only those who tried and those who didn't; and May Day is all about honoring the countless dead who tried.

Urban Warfare 2008

The satellite pictures above show the densely populated Sadr City district of Baghdad, home to some 2.5 million Shi'a men, women and children. It is rapidly becoming a second version of Gaza as battles rage in its narrow and crowded streets. Currently it is largely controlled by the Mahdi Army, a militia that is at least 60,000 strong and apparently prepared to go up against the mighty American military. In the sectarian bloodbath that has become Baghdad under US rule, the Mahdi Army patrols and protects this sprawling slum in a time when no one else dares. As brutal and unsavory as they may seem to Americans, if you were living in this cauldron of chaos you'd probably be glad to have any security you can get, regardless of its source. Given it's close proximity to the locus of American power in the region, the Green Zone, it is a huge security risk that has consistently been able to undermine or facilitate the various initiatives the US tries to stabilize the city and country. The real problem that the US is having is that they can't use the sort of firepower in Sadr City that they traditionally like to use when engaging hostile forces. The US Army's usual strategy of overwhelming firepower is simply not viable in an area with a population density of 67,000 people per square mile. Unless of course the purpose is genocide, which is something that Central Command would rather not get involved in, just yet at least. In the past month all hell has broken loose in Sadr City as Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers to resist Nuri al-Maliki's push to take control of the Shi'a districts loyal to the Mahdi Army. Sometimes I really get the feeling that the US military just goes tear assing around the world looking for the shit, and Lord Almighty do they seem to find it.
a dispatch from that front- NYT May 4th 2008

The missiles that hit close to the Sadr General Hospital were American. After a night of clashes in the neighborhood, the Americans fired at least three “precision-guided munitions” at the small building next door to the hospital. Neighbors said the building was used as a place of prayer for pilgrims, hospital employees and neighborhood residents, but the military identified it as a command center for the Shiite militias that it is battling.
Responsibility for the other strike is in dispute. The Americans said claims that they had attacked the children were “preposterous.” The area where the hit occurred is near heavily contested ground. Shiite militias trying to hit nearby Iraqi Army and American forces have sometimes misfired, hitting areas near there in recent fighting.
Both instances underline sad truths about urban warfare. The daily horror for families and children living near the front line area of Sadr City is that who is a friend and who a foe is no longer a meaningful question. Heavy weapons do not discriminate. The militias use rocket-propelled grenades, sniper rifles and mounted machine guns as well as AK-47 rifles while the Americans shoot Hellfire missiles, tank rounds, satellite-guided missiles and rounds from machine guns.

honest Bush

See, the truth is in there somewhere, you just have to edit it-

Hungry Hungry Humans

As this glorious globe keeps pace in the infinite expanse of space strange things are happening on the surface of this place. The great diversity that once defined this phenomenal organism we call earth is falling before the unrelenting arrival of more humans and our never ending quest to consume. In the past few weeks the price of rice has more than doubled, threatening the many millions that will no longer be able to purchase this grain to stave off starvation. Is the goal to change the world so much that we no longer have to feel humbled by our place in it, or do we just breed like bunnies and then make the earth give us more food? More likely still is that we are just rapacious apes devouring everything we can in some misled melodramatic madness that will cause us to burn ourselves up in a funeral pyre of passion and confusion. Or maybe that is but the fire from which the phoenix is destined to rise from, eternal and unscathed. We anthropoids love our answers, but the sublimely sad truth is that we are merely chasing shadows in our ephemeral minds that always vanish when the light shines upon them. So how serious do you want to make it, that's the question. You can revel in the sun and radiate delight, you can cower in fear and fright, or spend your life thinking that you are right; regardless of the path you know it cannot last. What is now will always slid effortlessly into the past. Children of the universe, sharing molecules with everything, we would do well to dance and sing. In our world of material abundance the soul starves and the mind is molded into a cage the bars of which most will never see, and thus think they are free. Probably best to remember that this show was going on long before you arrived and the curtain probably won't fall during your performance. We're a wild bunch, seemingly unique in the orderly universe, so we got that going for us, which is pretty special.Listen to the sages of the ages-
"The world is not as it seems, nor is it otherwise"-Buddha
"No human thing is of serious importance" -Plato
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free" -Goethe
"Obsession with self... is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life." Romans 8:6

Conflict

Many people view history as some sort of collective consensus that just happened to end up with the industrialization of earth and the prevalence of the Market Economy... such is not the case. The course of history is dominated by conflict, and all that our modern world is evolved from that cauldron of chaos. Thus is our modern world so rent with political, racial, religious, gender and cultural conflicts. It is the means by which humans decide what will come to pass. Anyone who aspires to a world in which we can live in peace fails to understand that any such world would necessarily exclude all progress. The presence of peace has never been a guarantee of the presence of justice, and as a result is useless as a means to measure our changing society. This presents a rather insurmountable problem for those determined and progressively minded citizens that will do anything to further their noble cause; except anything outside the accepted channels of behavior. So how are you going to change a social construction if you insist on operating within its parameters? To turn the question on its head, can you effect change from without? I think the bottom line is that people can only change so much in a lifespan. We are born into an already established system that in all likely hood will dominate our thoughts and feelings for the duration of our stay on earth. The pressure to conform is incessant and omnipotent, schools and prisons bear testament to that reality. Fortunately for the maintenance of my particular culture, people generally seem more concerned with making their existence as easy as possible rather than taking any responsibility for what takes place during that lifespan. My country is a past master at helping its citizens absolve themselves of any responsibility for anything other than their financial concerns. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that the primary reason the USA seems to be caught in a sort of psychological stasis is because we have become cowards, afraid to hold any truly personal opinions for fear that it won't be accepted by the rest of our contemporaries. In a world that is one gigantic struggle, the need to feel at home in your native land has long caused otherwise decent people to commit incalculable atrocities. And so it comes to pass that most Americans just download their thoughts from various media sources, completely bypassing the use of their own mental facilities. The more my nation speaks of freedom, democracy and liberty the more I think we are becoming the most enslaved people in history. Right before they loose all meaning, words are usually used with such profusion that their meanings become blurred, then disappear entirely. I can't help but thinking of Orwell's brilliantly succinct comment on this: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. I really hope that the rest of the world doesn't fall for this insidious trap. Perhaps our example will provide such a horrific example that we may yet serve some great purpose in the development of humanity.

In virtute sunt multi ascensus

Ali praying after a day of travel and fasting in the Sahara

Bunch of Brazilians
Suleyman Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey.

Muslim Lady

Colleseum

Inside of Duomo

Bangkok

Outside of DuomoBuddha in Cambodia

Tibet

There is no wealth like knowledge, and no poverty like ignorance.
-Lord Buddha
Of all the conflicts taking place on this planet, that occurring in Tibet is one of the most fascinating. On one side we have the largest political entity on earth- The Chinese Communist Party, with its millions of soldiers, huge resources and secular aggressive ideology. On the other side we have the most profoundly religious people in the world. A nation in which Buddhism is so much a part of every living thing that the destruction of 5,000 monasteries, the execution and imprisonment of religious leaders, and driving of the Dalai Lama from his land has all failed to put out these peoples mighty spirit. No matter how many people they brutalize and how many Han Chinese they import, they will never rule the hearts of the Tibetan people. Their culture is everything that China could lay claim to before the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, on some level the war that the PRC is waging upon Tibet is more of a culture war (kulturkampf) than a conventional or guerrilla in nature. Even as Lhasa and other areas rise in revolt, it is known that they are only making symbolic resistance to show that they are not walking quietly to their death. As the overlords of the billion people within' the PRC try to integrate into the global capitalist market union, they face the reality of having a land they conquered roughly a half century early rising up to challenge them and their right to dictate the terms of life to a people that has lived on the Tibetan plateau since the beginning of time. I'm putting my money on the Tibetans, because they are fighting for the right to live as they see fit and also for the ability to practice their religion, were as the PRC merely uses fear and violence to achieve their ends. Too bad the international community is nothing but self serving capitalist cutthroats or else pressure could be brought to bear that would certainly lead to Tibet no longer having to live under the jackboot of Fascism. The reason I have confidence that they will persevere is stated brilliantly by His Holiness the Dalai Lama- "If there is love, there is hope that one may have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue"

Zack's thoughts today

Just another day with me and the maze

think of your career and be filled with fear
gunna be fine, or so the rest always say
work so hard that you can't see yourself clear
wish I could get out, but alas I can't
never known anything but the hive
because I was born just like an ant
at this point, all I know is I'm alive
and that conformity is no longer an option
in spite of their mind numbing concoctions
the soul will slumber, but never die
trapped in this maze of men and sin
so when I look on modernity I don't cry
regardless of effort, their is no way to win
but you don't have to completely give in

I love how my fellow Americans view themselves as inherently intelligent. To do so requires a level of historical and geopolitical ignorance on such an unfathomable level that it almost impresses me. It's like talking to a Mormon who really thinks they are going to get their own planet or a Muslim who is counting on 72 virgins upon arrival in paradise- just no arguing with the devout. Napoleon once commented that the worst vice of a fanatic is their sincerity. Such is clearly the case in Imperial America. The faithful toil endlessly as the decadent aristocrats hatch plans of daring, destruction and profit. It is becoming progressively more evident that the government has the situation well in hand, and that the years of forced indoctrination (public schools) has yielded the desired harvest of completely subservient hardworking politically unorganized dependents. American history is like watching a new artist mold the familiar stone of humanity into some new and frightful form. Powerful, ignorant, arrogant and utterly rapacious in all ways... hell of a production. Not really sure if the person that has been created is a mutant or the next stage of civilization. I'm hoping we are anomalies and will serve as a warning to history of the folly of our ways, but something about our society seems to work a little better than most others. It could just be that our greedy love of possessions when coupled with the worlds best resources and a militaristic tradition was the perfect mix for world domination. Such is probably the case, but the subculture of this mighty Empire seems to still have art, soul, brains and heart- which have ever been the only tools capable of combating powerful centralized authority. In a very real way, most Americans are brainwashed beasts that hold nothing sacred and fear no consequence for their behavior. Luckily the universe has a bad ass sense of humor, so I'm confident that we will suffer in proportion to our excesses, and we will probably bitch like no other people in history. Allis well that ends well I guess.