Spengler for Dummies

As published on Common Dreams and Online Journal, 8/31/10:







Nearly a hundred thousand people flocked to Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally. Entire families drove in from distant states. They wore red, white and blue, carried American and Don’t Tread On Me flags. Some brandished a Christian standard, white, with a red cross on blue canton. A man peddled a self designed, quite attractive Tea Party flag. “Haven’t sold as much as I would like,” he complained to me, adding, “I’m unemployed.” One woman wore a T-Shirt, “HARD GLOCK CAFÉ.” Another, “NOT RACIST, NOT VIOLENT, JUST NO LONGER SILENT.” They heard Sarah Palin proudly declare that she spoke “not as a politician. No, as something more—something much more. I’ve been asked to speak as the mother of a soldier.” This, from a woman who is nothing but a politician these days, having relieved herself of all official duties. Aiming for 2012, she’s already a very long nose or two ahead of all other stumpers. “Say what you want to say about me, but I raised a combat vet, and you can’t take that away from me,” Palin reiterated. The sun baked faithful then heard Glenn Beck urge them to “pray on your knees, but with your door open for your children to see.”

So it’s basically God, guns and country, which is familiar enough, but what made this event truly bizarre was Beck’s decision to claim Martin Luther King as predecessor and inspiration. King spoke out against our military adventurism, while Beck and Palin celebrate it. King thought the money wasted on bombs and more bombs should be redirected to social programs, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” The Beck and Palin crowd, on the other hand, only scream about big government when public funds are allocated humanely, not destructively. They hate taxes, yet never rail against the biggest looter of our treasury, the military industrial complex. If King were alive, it’s doubtful he would want to share the same stage with these grinning, cynical bobble heads, Beck, Palin, or even Obama, for that matter.

If the Beck crowd consider Obama a Socialist or even Communist, what do they really think, deep down, of the much more leftist Martin Luther King? But King was murdered 42 years ago, so he can be evoked quite harmlessly. For clues into Beck’s thinking, one shouldn’t look at any Civil Rights leader, but Oswald Spengler. Spengler was obsessed with the decline of civilization, particularly White civilization. He equated culture with honor, which is inculcated and apotheosized by the military. With its hierarchy and stress on duty, the army provides the ideal social model. Equality means anarchy. Spengler even dismissed rationalism, defining it as “the arrogance of the urban intellect, which, detached from its roots and no longer guided by strong instinct, looks down with contempt on the full-blooded thinking of the past and the wisdom of ancient peasant stock.”

The Beck crowd also don’t much care for urban intellectuals, for these tend to be “politically correct” and “liberal.” These don’t pray on their knees, if at all. They mix with other races. Some of them are gay. Spengler despised liberalism, which he saw as a gateway drug to all forms of decadence: pacifism, nihilism, freedom of the press, even jazz and “negro dances.” Spengler complained that liberals were striving for "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." How dreadful. Enfeebled by liberalism, the white race was becoming vulnerable to usurpation by the “Yellow-Brown-Black-Red menace.” Spengler lamented, “How far in fact have the white nations advanced towards pacifism? Is the outcry against war an intellectual gesture or a serious abdication from history at the cost of dignity, honour, liberty? Yet life is war.”

A war between the races, that is. Within each race, however, there is also a threat from below, from the riff raff, less refined elements of society, especially the types that swarm and fester in the city. Spengler, “The Western Civilization of this century is threatened, not by one, but by two world revolutions of major dimensions. In both their real compass, their profundity, and their workings have so far escaped recognition. The one comes from below, the other from without: class war and race war.”

Today, what do we have but a black, supposedly Socialist president? One who’s also a Muslim, as 18% of Americans somehow manage to believe. To protest against this darkness, this Spengler’s nightmare come to life, many disturbed citizens drove hundreds of miles to our nation’s capital, though not without trepidation, since it has a 55% black population. It will be worth it, since there, on that vast, white stage, is a normal looking, somewhat sexy white woman, soccer mom, deer hunter and breeder of combat soldiers. On top of that, she comes from one of the whiter states, so her values are OK. Sarah supports big oil and big military, just like Obama, actually, but he’s only faking it. Dude’s a Socialist. In two years, all of this will be over.

According to Spengler, no dialogue or cooperation is possible between the different races or classes. The life of Martin Luther King proves that he was dead wrong.








.

warnings

by Brian Salchert, who died this morning:






This poet is dead. So don't cross him.

-

Don't remember when the last time was I got
a full night's rest. These days/ approximately
every hour my sleep breaks because I have to
go pee in the pot.

-

In spite of what I and my doctor are doing
to prevent it, I have a feeling my bones are
turning to dust.

-

This afternoon while sitting in a chair in
the livingroom I told Janice's alien doll
which I have standing in a nearby rocker:
I think the end is near. I then noticed
tears welling.

-

Am considering posting all my poems and
related works at Sprintedon Migrasaurus
one per post in this blog. I know many
are of no value, but I care not. If 6
or less are worth saving, the effort I
expended was worth it.

-

A flea bite from a flea I killed last
night has suddenly spread and become
worse. I put some triple antibiotic
ointment on it.

-

And what about the swine flu expected
to be in this country in October?

-

Should you be in need of some ways to ruin
your life/ I have a few.





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Kill Them

As published on Common Dreams, Information Clearing House, Online Journal and Counterpunch, 8/28/10:




Michael Enright, a 21-year-old college student, slashed a NYC cab driver in the face and neck because this man was Muslim. Enright is being held in a psychiatric ward. If he is mad, then the United States is also insane. Enright’s assault merely mirrors what we, as a nation, have done for nearly a decade.

The United States has responded criminally and incoherently to what happened on September 11, 2001. Lopped of our twin members, downtown, we also lost our authoritative voice. Two days after that disaster, George Bush grimly declared, “The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.” Six months later, Bush shrugged, "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority.” Our current president never mentions bin Laden, yet Obama has sent many more troops into Afghanistan. We’re not leaving any time soon, that’s for sure. Congress has just approved 1.3 billion dollars to expand our military bases there. Our new mission, if Time Magazine is to be believed, is to defend Afghan women against the Taliban, whom we created in the first place, to fight the Soviets. America gets a kick out of these flip flops. We propped up Saddam Hussein, then we had him hanged. We fought Communist Vietnam, then we staged a naval exercise with that same regime, as happened just recently, riling up China. Tension feeds the military industrial complex. Wars are even better.

Responding to 9/11, America also invaded Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with that catastrophe. Since the real reasons for our two current conflicts, access to oil and natural gas, defense of the petrodollar, war profiteering, are never admitted to, many Americans have concluded that we’re simply waging war against Islam, which is, frankly, not that far off the mark, considering our unequivocal support for Israel whenever it attacks Gaza, Lebanon, Syria or any other Muslim population. The U.S. has also been killing Pakistani civilians and threatening Iran. It’s a miracle many Muslims don’t hate us more.

Without Israel and oil, it’s a safe bet we wouldn’t be demonizing Muslims so relentlessly. As is, this stoked hatred is bringing out the worst in our character. On Yahoo! News, many comments on the Enright story don’t condemn but applaud his obvious crime, and also bash Islam.

Bruce, “Slay the infidel.....stone the rape victim......beat your wife........mate with your goat.....wipe your bu tt with your bare hand.....AHHH the joys of islam!”

David, “this guy should get a medal and be aloud to blow up the mosque at the ground zero sight, its about time someone in ny stepped up and showed some american balls!!!”

Spreading like cancer across the internet, openly hateful and racist comments are especially common after stories about Muslims, blacks or Mexicans, the top three scapegoats at the moment. Obama is a lightning rod for anti-black racism, which is ironic because he does not favor blacks, in any way. Like Bush, Clinton and the rest of our bank-bailing-out, paid-for politicians, Obama couldn't care less about the little guys. Eyeing his own wallet, and his future after the White House, Obama’s here to defend the moneyed interest. His blackness is merely symbolic, but that’s enough to enrage the racists.

After Michelle Obama went to Spain, Alternative Right, a webzine with contributions from several established authors, had an article titled, “Michelle’s Vacation in Whitey World.” Among the comments, one man suggested that she should have gone to a blacker destination, like “Ghana or the Maldives.”

One Sheila wrote, “I cringe every time I see a photo of the Sasquatch/Wookie as purportedly "First Lady" of American women. My spouse always comments that she reminds him of a chimp with her underbite, and I am always struck by her enormous feet and trapezius muscles. Either way I feel a sort of cognitive dissonance, such as when I view old photos and see 19th century blacks dressed in Victorian clothing.

As far as her amazing European adventure, she is putting herself in white people's faces. Her very presence is a way of announcing the new order.”

There’s no new order, lady. Obama himself is a head fake! Scratch that skin lightly, and you’ll see your beloved Dubya again. Everything is still in place, including the torture chambers. After another article in Alternative Right, a reader lamented, “After 9/11, we saw the lack of a white nation identity. There was abject surrender to Islam.” Only the most deluded can call the killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and the occupation of two Islamic countries, an “abject surrender to Islam.” Although not all Americans think this way, of course, this man is hardly alone. As the world’s biggest source of terror, we’re posing as its most helpless victims.

The scapegoating of Muslims, blacks and Mexicans gives the appearance that we’re being threatened from without and below, when we’re actually being mugged from above, from the inside. It’s the entrenched who are killing us, not outsiders. Even with 9/11, too many questions remain. One must remember that Bin Laden began as a CIA asset, and two months before the attack, he was at the American hospital in Dubai, where a CIA agent visited him. On September 10, 2001, bin Laden was at the Army Hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, to receive dialysis treatment. Again, no attempt was made to arrest him. Today, we’re also not trying to arrest this man, and that’s no conspiracy theory.





.

US Attempts To Extradite 9/11 FEMA Videographer From Argentina

Press TV News:

.

My new novel, Love Like Hate,

is finally available. It has 51 chapters. You can read the first two online. The blurbs:



Linh Dinh is already one of the secret masters of short fiction. Love Like Hate is something like a traditional cross-cultural novel that's been shocked into life by Dinh's uncanny ability to tell us stories we didn't even know we wanted to hear.--Ed Park, editor of The Believer and author of Personal Days



Love Like Hate affirms that Linh Dinh's is one of the great original voices in American literature of the 21st century. The English language is a better, weirder, smarter place with Dinh writing in it.--Matt Sharpe, author of Jamestown



Soulful, and unflinching stuff. With Bukowski looking over his shoulder, Linh Dinh serves the ruthlessness of everyday life straight up, no chaser, but with marvelous absurdist flights smack into irony. Nobody writes prose like a good poet.--Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus

Japanese ‘planet’ walker rests up in Philly

Philadelphia Inquirer, 8/25/10:



A journey of 3,000 miles begins with a stop in Philly.

Masahito Yoshida, a 29-year-old mechanical engineer from Japan, plans to walk across the continent to Vancouver. The whole way he'll be lugging a wheeled cart holding his tent, sleeping bag, clothes and other belongings.

Just as he says he did from Shanghai to Lisbon.

That's right. China to Portugal. About 7,000 miles. The biggest leg of his legging it around the world.

More or less. He did fly from Europe to Philadelphia, and, months from now, he'll fly from Vancouver back to Shanghai, to complete what he says is a more-than-two-year journey.

His mother, of course, thinks he's crazy, he said in Japanese, his words translated by photographer Akira Suwa in the Inquirer cafeteria.

Bulgarian doctors considered amputating parts of Yoshida's fingers because of frostbite from braving frozen mountains, he says. In Russia, a shepherd, unprovoked, started punching him in the face. In the Ukraine, gypsies stole his gear, but it was recovered by police.

Yoshida's greatest second-guessing, though, came when his grandfather died. He said he almost ended his quest in Lisbon, but decided to fly west instead of east back home.

But the trip has apparently lived up to his dreams - of seeing the world up close, and meeting lots of people.

This planet has lots of different inhabitants, he said.

He loved desolate Kazakstan, where welcoming Muslims showed wonderful hospitality, and where the night sky blazes with stars. He'll never forget standing atop a 3,000-meter mountain, touching the clouds.

[...]







.

After Anne Waldman,

Christian Bök, Rae Armantrout, Eileen Myles, K. Silem Mohammad and Elizabeth Robinson, I'm the latest installment in the Fact-Simile trading card series. Costing just 99 cents each, plus s/h, every card has a poem in the back.

.

Mississippi Shrimpers Refuse to Trawl, Fearing Oil, Dispersants

IPS, 8/20/10:



[...]

"I don't want people to get sick," Danny Ross, a commercial fisherman from Biloxi told IPS, "We want the government and BP to have transparency with the Corexit dispersants."

"Why would we lie about oil and dispersant in our waters, when our livelihoods depend on our being able to fish here?" Miller asked IPS. "I want this to be cleaned up so we can get back to how we used to live. But it doesn't make sense for us or anyone else to fish if our waters are toxified. I don't know why people are angry at us for speaking the truth. We're not the ones who put the oil in the water."

[...]

"We think they opened shrimp season prematurely," Miller said. "How can we put our product back on the market when everybody in America knows what happened down here? I have seen so many dead animals in the last few months I can't even keep count."

On Thursday, several commercial shrimpers, including Miller and Stewart, held a press conference at the Biloxi Marina. Other fishermen there were not fishing because they feared making people sick with seafood they might catch.

Ross said he has watched horseshoe crabs trying to crawl out of the water, and other marine life like stingrays and flounder trying to escape the water as well. He believes this is because the water is hypoxic due to the toxicity of the toxic dispersants, of which BP admits to using at least 1.9 million gallons.

"I will not wet a net and catch shrimp until I know it's safe to do so," Ross added. "I have no way of life now. I can't shrimp and others are calling the shots. For the next 20 years, what am I supposed to do? Because that's how long it's going to take for our waters to be safe again."

[...]





.

.

.

An exchange with Joe

In my latest article, I quoted Joe Bageant, "Every redneck I know has a daughter who's married to a black guy!" Joe just wrote me:

Every urban progressive is so focused on race, they miss the point that it is all about class. So let's put 'em down at the chicken plant in Huntington West Virginia ... shoveling guts into the "gut hopper," for a year or two. They will soon learn a few things about rednecks, race and class in America:

Fer instance:

1--Unlike urban dwellers, who we fuck generally has more to do with class than race.
2--We will fuck just about anything
3--So will the blacks in chicken plant America
4--Mexicans, to their credit, seem to be a bit pickier. But not much more

As for the chicken plant Asians... none of us can figure where the hell they go after work, or what they do. My guess is that they've got their own planet out there somewhere..

In art and labor,


joe

Then, under the topic line, "Read yer piece":

Soulful, incisive and with that cosmic sadness and quiet ruthless truth of yours...

I sure hope we can do something live together some day. I've become a fucking monster on the road...tearing down the house...I've learned a lot since I was in Philly at Penn... Constant touring will do that. Build yer chops.

And I hate it. Just fucking hate it. When the obligations of the new book are over in early spring...I'm hanging it put to dry ...except maybe for the occasional internet essay, (which kills no trees, just poisons the earth's waters in chip manufacture). Not so much in despair , though that too, but because here in Jalisco...hard by "the River of Stones" the sun stabs the earth mercilessly, and the poignancy of this red light on these hills speaks to me in languages that harken back to my LSD days. Something is coming full circle.

Your brother,


joe

PS: The way internet discussion threads dissolve into mewling babble says a lot about America, doesn't it? When are you and yer sweetie coming down here for a visit? Food and lodging are free for as long as you want.

I respond:

Yo Joe,

I will try to come down to see you at some point. My wife is hanging on to her shopping mall job, because she may not find another one after this. The mall is dying. Her boss lost everything in the stock market, then his house. Now he’s turning into a crank. I can see why, but it’s tough on my wife.

Yesterday I ran into an old friend who’s doing really well. With a six-figured salary and a second house by the shore, with a swimming pool, he hardly notices that the economy is tanking. This guy clawed his way up. His twin brother is in jail, again. When my friend was a kid, his family only ate out at McDonald’s, and only in the van, in the parking lot, because his old man had a phobia of eating around strangers!


Linh

.

Wikipedia editing courses launched by Zionist groups

Guardian, 8/18/10:



Since the earliest days of the worldwide web, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has seen its rhetorical counterpart fought out on the talkboards and chatrooms of the internet.

Now two Israeli groups seeking to gain the upper hand in the online debate have launched a course in “Zionist editing” for Wikipedia, the online reference site.

Yesha Council, representing the Jewish settler movement, and the rightwing Israel Sheli (My I srael) movement, ran their first workshop this week in Jerusalem, teaching participants how to rewrite and revise some of the most hotly disputed pages of the online reference site.

[...]




.

Dissing T-Shirts

As published on Common Dreams and Online Journal, 8/19/10:






Lumpens are parading in underwear. What a concept, We’ll charge them real money for a kind of tube sox for the torso. Male, female, one size fits all. (Actually three, Rotund, Super Rotund and Outta Here.) We don’t pay, but triple the price if they advertise for us. In every corporate shack serving deep fried whatever, reconstituted meat matter and colored whey, diners show individuality by their choice of chest advertisement. By donning a Blackwater muscle T, dad declares his allegiance to privatization and kick ass. Rebellious daughter flaunts Old Navy. Even infants can become sandwich boards during this era of too late late capitalism. There’s no truth to the rumor that Pro Lifers are fitting baby dolls on fetuses.

As you move up in class, this loudly desperate fashion fades away. The affluent aren’t so inclined to brand their chests, backs, butts and car bumpers with slogans and mass produced one liners. No WHERE’S MY BAILOUT? No MY SON CAN KICK YOUR HONOR STUDENT SON’S ASS. Ballasted by a healthy bank account, they don’t need to assert themselves so literally. It’s the voiceless who strut around with a message, often goofily anti social, on their boobs and pecs. I HAVE MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES AND NONE OF THEM LIKE YOU. I’ve noticed more screen printed skulls, daggers and guns on the streets these days, but also more LOVE and peace signs, and no, not on hippies.

The poor man wears gold outside his stupid T-shirt. He can’t afford POLO anything, so he wears “POLO,” like a talisman, on his stupid T-shirt. Of course, there are also many who walk around with nothing but dyed underwear on their person. The poor man does not see himself defined truthfully anywhere, so he defines himself with his stupid T-shirt. This, in turn, becomes another strike against him.

Turning on the TV, the poor man sees himself being chased through the streets and alleyways, then pinned to the ground, grass and dirt on his face. On another channel, he’s being kicked and clawed by his significant other, then lectured by the avuncular Maury, or vaguely professorial Jerry. His stoicism, physical and spiritual strengths, and the empathy he has for others who struggle, just like him, are never conveyed. The biggest tippers are bartenders, waiters and waitresses, since they know what it’s like to depend on tips.

The poor man is almost always depicted as a racist but, on the lowest rungs, you’ll find much more tolerance than commonly suspected. The reason is simple, the poorest are forced to mix, whether on buses, in their work places or apartment buildings, and familiarity can also lead to accommodation, friendship, even affection, not just contempt. Black male, white female couples are most often seen among the poorest, giving at least some credence to Joe Bageant’s assertion that “Every redneck I know has a daughter who’s married to a black guy!”

Visiting the Camden tent city, now shut down, I was struck by the number of interracial couples. The encampment itself was highly mixed, with blacks, whites and hispanics all living together. Up to a hundred and twenty people shared one bathroom, a honey bucket, and two shower stalls. They often ate communally. The self-appointed “mayor” was Lorenzo, a Jamaican immigrant, Vietnam vet, ex-con and near suicide. Jumping off the Ben Franklin Bridge years ago, Lorenzo was grabbed by a white cop. Together they plunged onto the water, 130 feet below. Lorenzo was saved, but the cop was paralyzed. This experience changed Lorenzo, transformed him eventually into a kind of pastor for his desperate flock. I don’t cite this tent city as any kind of Utopia. It was certainly a dire place, but it was also proof that the most abandoned could band together to help and protect each other. Camden is very menacing, frankly, but I never felt safer there than in this tent city.

Gangs are nearly always ethnic, and as the economy collapses, we will likely see a spike in ethnic gangs terrorizing each other and the innocent, but no, America doesn’t have to become a kind of San Quentin from sea to shining sea, with the only havens isolated homesteads and gated communities, where the wealthy are already safely ensconced. Wealth always means isolation, private this, exclusive that—the rich don’t even want to share a toilet seat with their spouse—but poverty is communal. No chairmen, these are bench people. Think bleacher seats. Think Greyhound, which, to the poorest, is hotel as much as mode of transportation. Desperation will bind folks together, force them to share, barter and employ new and neglected strategies for survival.

Petty commerce transcends racial barriers, creates social bonds and communities. Think of the thousands of Vietnamese manicurists servicing black, white and hispanic patrons. On El Paso’s Santa Fe Street, Korean shopkeepers converse with their customers in Spanish. In my own neighborhood, Philly’s Italian Market, third generation Italians sell stuff to blacks and immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America. To make a buck, people will get along, but they must have a chance to do business, unhindered by superfluous laws, codes and zoning regulations. In nearly all countries, you can just stroll down the street to get a bite or a drink, but most Americans must get in their car and drive for 20, 30 minutes, if not more, to buy anything. Small businesses are good, especially the smallest, even those conducted from stands and pushcarts. In poor neighborhoods across America—hell, in downtown Los Angeles—you already see these zero overhead operations. These should not be outlawed, but encouraged, because that’s how the poorest survive. If people could make some honest change, they’d be less likely to kill and rob each other.

The formal economy has looted, swindled and bankrupted us all. Now rises the informal. In our stupid T-shirts, we’re already dressed for the occasion.






.

The Message of the Bulldozers

Jeff Halper in Counterpunch, 8/16/10:



On the day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began, at 2:30 in the morning, workers sent by the Israeli authorities, protected by dozens of police, destroyed the tombstones in the last portion of the Mamilla cemetery, an historic Muslim burial ground with graves going back to the 7th Century, hitherto left untouched. The government of Israel has always been fully cognizant of the sanctity and historic significance of the site. Already in 1948, when control of the cemetery reverted to Israel, the Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry recognized Mamilla “to be one of the most prominent Muslim cemeteries, where seventy thousand Muslim warriors of [Saladin’s] armies are interred along with many Muslim scholars. Israel will always know to protect and respect this site.” For all that, and despite (proper) Israeli outrage when Jewish cemeteries are desecrated anywhere in the world, the dismantlement of the Mamilla cemetery has been systematic. In the 1960s “Independence Park” was built over a portion of it; subsequently an urban road was built through it, major electrical cables were laid over graves and a parking lot constructed over yet another piece. Now some 1,500 Muslim graves have been cleared in several nighttime operations to make way for…..a $100 million Museum of Tolerance and Human Dignity, a project of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. (Ironically, Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center’s Director, appeared on Fox News to express his opposition to the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, because the site of the 9/11 attack “is a cemetery.”)

[...]





.

21st-Century Homesteading

Philadelphia Inquirer, 8/15/10:


More families seek simple, self-sufficient, low-impact lifestyles.


On this hot summer morning in suburban Collegeville, the Fraser children bounce out of bed and race downstairs. They're not running for the TV - they don't have one.

Instead, 10-year-old twins Eliza and Carolina and their brother, Perry, 6, head for the barn, where the hens are cooing and a baby rooster practices his wake-up call. They're already old hands at egg-hunting.

"I found one!" Perry shrieks.

In no time at all, he and his sisters collect five of these sublimely fresh eggs, soon to be scrambled into a delicious pile for breakfast.

Megan and Scott Fraser and their children live in an 18th-century house with a barn on two acres, about halfway between the King of Prussia and Plymouth Meeting malls, in a keep-to-yourself neighborhood of longtime, working-class folks and newer residents.

The Frasers aren't pioneers or homesteaders, as those terms are commonly understood: They haven't abandoned city for country, or turned their backs on technology.

The couple are fully wired, with iPhone, GPS, Kindle, and iPad, and the children trade chores for computer time. But in their own way, as generations before had, the Frasers have gone back to the land.

People all across the country and region are keeping bees and raising chickens, gardening and canning. Though statistics are hard to come by in this diffuse movement, there are indicators of the trend:

Up to 200,000 hobbyists keep bees in the United States, compared with 75,000 in the mid-1990s, according to Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine. (There are an estimated 5,400 in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.)

"It's the greatest positive change I've seen since I started in this job 23 years ago," Flottum says.

About 100 new members a day sign up for www.backyardchickens.com, which has 55,000 total. The numbers started taking off two years ago.

"It's really a trend across all demographics," says founder Rob Ludlow.

And 43 million American households planted vegetable gardens in 2009, a jump of 19 percent over 2008, which was 10 percent higher than 2007, the National Gardening Association says.

The Frasers do it all.

They grow organic vegetables and fruit. They raise bees, chickens, ducks, and pigs, for honey, eggs, and meat. They spin yarn from rabbit fur and put up enough tomato soup, applesauce, and berries to last the winter.

They aren't purists, to be sure.

Though without a TV - whose sole purpose, Megan believes, is "to sell you stuff" - the family watches movies on a computer screen. Cars and air-conditioners put them squarely on the grid, and unlike diehard homesteaders, they don't home-school their children, who go to Penn View Christian School near Souderton.

Still, Megan, 37, and Scott, 42, who met at Eastern University in St. Davids and married in 1996, want to live a self-sufficient life, as best they can.

[...]





.

Plugged Stupid

As published on Common Dreams and Online Journal, 8/16/10:





In the preface to Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman wrote, "The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetic nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem [...] One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women [...] Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall."

Boy, was our bard wrong! Though we grow practically nothing but corn now, we are bankrupt, and of all the arts, none is more despised and neglected than poetry, but don’t worry, this article is not really about that dessicated corpse, but the climate that has made poetry obsolete, the conditions that are the cause and symptoms of our national nervous breakdown.

Poetry is close reading and attentive listening. It requires silence, reflection, sustained focus and analysis, mental habits that are much atrophied in our culture, and which our young are growing up mostly without. In a society that always hurries, even to nowhere, fast, and values quantity over quality, most this, biggest that, poetry is truly a waste of time. We don’t even have the patience to look at each other in the eyes and listen.

I talk to the side of a face, as this face stares at a screen. My voice must often compete with yet another song, replayed for the zillionth time. I shout in fragments, because even three sentences in succession would crash my listener’s frayed hard drive, burdened as it is with trillions of greatest hits, sport statistics, Sarah Palin’s aphorisms and porn images.

There are books devoted to our mass attention deficit disorder, but it only takes common sense to figure out why we can’t think straight or hold ideas that aren’t slogans, soundbites or stereotypes. You can’t think if you’re not trying to do so. You can’t think if you’d rather do anything else, or several things simultaneously. Yes, we’re distracted and seduced relentlessly, but it’s possible to say no to noise and flickering lights. Babysat by television, our kids are growing up fidgety, with flawed memory and retarded language skills, just like, well, their elders. On a recent school visit, I asked a group of sixth graders, “How many of you listen to music as you read?” Two thirds raised their hands. “Next time, just try,” I said, “to read without listening to the ipod or stereo, and without having the TV on. You’ll comprehend more. I’m not telling you what to do, now,” I smiled. “It’s just a suggestion. Will you give it a shot?”

“Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun…. there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand…. nor look through the eyes of the dead…. nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.”

It’s ironic that Whitman, who had such an enormous appetite for direct contact, for breathing flesh, touched or just seen, was also inspired by photography, a brand new invention during his time. In "Pictures," a poem written before Leaves of Grass, Whitman compares the mind to a gallery of photos, and when his masterpiece came out, he explained in an unsigned review, “Its author is Walter Whitman, and the book is a reproduction of the author. His name is not on the frontispiece, but his portrait, half length, is. The contents of the book form a daguerreotype of his inner being […] ”

Well, we’ve arrived at that hell universe where sexed up reproductions have eclipsed what’s real, where we’re hypnotized and titillated daily by a bombardment of hallucinations produced by Hollywood, Madison Avenue and Washington DC. It’s all P.R., all the time now. Last week, we saw Obama and Sasha bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s curious that only one photo was released. Judging from the light, a shutter speed of 1/200 would suffice, so maybe they were only in the water for one two hundredth of a second, with a nervous Michelle, just outside the frame, beckoning, “Get the hell out of that Corexit stew, honey!!! Quick!”

Looking at that image, I immediately thought of Mao in the Yangtze. At 72-years-old, The Great Helmsman covered nine miles in 65 minutes, according to state propaganda. No one ever said Communists were subtle. When it came to suckering and lulling the masses, however, they always had much to learn from Capitalists, and China, at least, is catching up fast. Don’t harangue. Seduce! Don’t ban “cultural poison.” Facilitate it! It has just been announced that China will allow some web porn, both foreign and domestic. With a billion (hairy) hands newly preoccupied, less energy will be left for griping, that’s for sure. It’s instructive to remember that a poet, Bei Dao, was at the heart of the Tienanmen protest in 1989. In the new, media-saturated China, this would be highly unlikely.

The propaganda we’re fed doesn’t have to be as crude as, say, a cheerful Bush feeding turkey to troops, or a young, attractive woman without nose and, “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan.” More insidious is the beamed appearance of normalcy, the goofy jokes, dancing contests and fried chicken ads, etc, that’s masking pervasive rot and despair. As more crimes are committed against us and in our names, look for more trivia to drown our exhausted minds.









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Are the American people obsolete?

Michael Lind in Salon, 7/27/10:




[...]

If much of America's investor class no longer needs Americans either as workers or consumers, elite Americans might still depend on ordinary Americans to protect them, by serving in the military or police forces. Increasingly, however, America's professional army is being supplemented by contractors -- that is, mercenaries. And the elite press periodically publishes proposals to sell citizenship to foreigners who serve as soldiers in an American Foreign Legion. It is probably only a matter of time before some earnest pundit proposes to replace American police officers with foreign guest-worker mercenaries as well.

Offshoring and immigration, then, are severing the link between the fate of most Americans and the fate of the American rich. A member of the elite can make money from factories in China that sell to consumers in India, while relying entirely or almost entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country. With a foreign workforce for the corporations policed by brutal autocracies and non-voting immigrant servants in the U.S., the only thing missing is a non-voting immigrant mercenary army, whose legions can be deployed in foreign wars without creating grieving parents, widows and children who vote in American elections.

If the American rich increasingly do not depend for their wealth on American workers and American consumers or for their safety on American soldiers or police officers, then it is hardly surprising that so many of them should be so hostile to paying taxes to support the infrastructure and the social programs that help the majority of the American people. The rich don't need the rest anymore.

[...]




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When Globalism Runs Its Course ... The Year America Dissolved

Paul Craig Roberts at Global Research, August 3, 2010:



It was 2017. Clans were governing America.

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.

The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.

With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.

The government was forced to print money in order to pay its bills, causing domestic prices to rise rapidly. Faced with hyperinflation, Washington took recourse in terminating Social Security and Medicare and followed up by confiscating the remnants of private pensions. This provided a one-year respite, but with no more resources to confiscate, money creation and hyperinflation resumed.

Organized food deliveries broke down when the government fought hyperinflation with fixed prices and the mandate that all purchases and sales had to be in US paper currency. Unwilling to trade appreciating goods for depreciating paper, goods disappeared from stores.

Washington responded as Lenin had done during the “war communism” period of Soviet history. The government sent troops to confiscate goods for distribution in kind
to the population. This was a temporary stop-gap until existing stocks were depleted, as future production was discouraged. Much of the confiscated stocks became the property of the troops who seized the goods.

Goods reappeared in markets under the protection of local warlords. Transactions were conducted in barter and in gold, silver, and copper coins.

[...]




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Jimmy Reid

(1932-2010). His finest speech, delivered at Glasgow University in 1972:



Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It's the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.

Many may not have rationalised it. May not even understand, may not be able to articulate it. But they feel it. It therefore conditions and colours their social attitudes. Alienation expresses itself in different ways in different people. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the criminal antisocial behaviour of a section of the community. It is expressed by those young people who want to opt out of society, by drop-outs, the so-called maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and narcotics. Of course, it would be wrong to say it was the sole reason for these things. But it is a much greater factor in all of them than is generally recognised.

[...]






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US Judge OKs confession extracted by threatening suspect with rape

RAW STORY, 8/11/10:


In one of the first military commissions held under the Obama administration, a US military judge has ruled that confessions obtained by threatening the subject with rape are admissible in court.

The case involves Omar Ahmed Khadr, a citizen of Canada who was apprehended in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old and has remained in Guantanamo Bay for the last seven years awaiting trial for terrorism and war crimes.

[...]




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Chris Hedges on American illiteracy and childishness

3/4/10:

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Upcoming readings

not all details are in...



September 4, 7:30PM
Photo Exhibit and Street Performance
Yitzhak Rabin Galery, NYC
49.5 Orchard Street



September 14, 7PM
with Sabrina Orah Mark
at the University of Richmond, VA
Weinstein Hall, Brown-Alley Room



October 6
Asian American Writers Workshop, NYC



October 7, 8:43pm
A conversation with Matthew Sharpe
the Center for Fiction, NYC
17 East 47th Street



October 14
University of California at Santa Cruz
Humanities Lecture Hall
UCSC 1156 High St.


October 15
San Francisco State University



November 4, 7:30PM
with Edwidge Danticat
Philadelphia Free Library



December 8
Poetry Project, NYC






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Wordless Masses

As published on Common Dreams, Counterpunch and Online Journal, 8/10/10:





Camden, a city of 80,000 people, has three public libraries. Last week came news that these three branches may close for good at the end of this year, with most of the books given away or destroyed. This, in the city where America’s greatest poet, Walt Whitman, spent two decades, and where he is buried.

Camden is one of the poorest cities in America, with an extremely high illiteracy, high school drop out and murder rates. Officially, unemployment is at 25%, so you can double that figure. Not too long ago, Camden, like America itself, was an industrial powerhouse. During World War II, it had the biggest shipyard in the world, employing 40,000 people. Campbell Soup’s main factory was here. RCA Victor was here. All that remains of this industrial heritage is a huge downtown mural showing smiling workers engaging in productive activities, quite a contrast to the mostly dazed, overweight, well tattooed and underwear flashing citizens strutting back and forth on surrounding streets. Like Detroit, Camden is an extreme example of our industrial and social disintegration, but look around you, there are incipient Camdens and Detroits all over this country.

The most impressive structure in today’s Camden is, no surprise here, its baseball stadium, just like in Detroit, where Comerica Park is the jewel of a downtown that flaunts several completely empty skyscrapers. A few blocks away, the one-dollar houses sprout. Hey, we may be going down the toilet, but our stadia are still the best! Circuses are not just necessary to cheer up and anesthetize a disheartened and increasingly angry populace, but in America, our nightly sporting contests also have ideological contents. The American dream, the idea that anyone can rise to the top, even a ghetto youth or a remotest farm boy, is now only alive in the sporting realm. It is our remaining proof that discipline and perseverance will pay off. In spite of regular scandals of doping, crooked refs and other forms of cheating, the playing field is more or less level, where anyone can kick anyone else’s butts if he’s truly superior. Sport is also continuity, hence the fans’ obsession with records, past legends and traditions. Watching sports, we can pretend that nothing has changed, that we’re still a country with the disposable income and leisure to enjoy things that don’t matter. And true enough, during the two or three hours of watching, real life catastrophes and personal worries are kept at bay. Nothing is allowed to interfere except the SUV, fast food and beer commercials. Nothing has changed.

American workers cannot compete with Chinese. This has much less to do with any cultural factor, it’s not so much because we’re less industrious or disciplined, we can’t compete simply because we’re not slaves. Transplanted to America, a Chinese wouldn’t be able to compete with his clone in China. China is a totalitarian country where unions are disallowed, and this helpless, disempowered work force is exactly what the Capitalists want. Hence the seemingly odd marriage between corporate bosses and these “Communists.” The real meaning of globalism, its true aim, is to exploit as ruthlessly as possible the workers, and also the environment, the earth, so that a few fat cats at the top can become insanely wealthy. If Chinese workers had a voice, they wouldn't put up with, as Johann Hari described in a recent article, having “to work and live in giant factory-cities that they almost never leave. Each room sleeps 10 workers, and each dorm houses 5,000. There are no showers; they are given a sponge to clean themselves with. A typical shift begins at 7.45am and ends at 10.55pm.” Many have literally dropped dead from overwork. Sounds just like conditions in America itself, before our unions gained the upper hand after decades of being beaten up and shot at by State Troopers and National Guardsmen. In 1941, just before the U.S. entered the war, Bethlehem steel workers had to go on strike to demand, among other concessions, a 10 minute lunch break and a "welfare room," where they could shower and change into clean clothes to go home at the end of the day.

With most of our factories crumbling, our unions are no longer players in national politics, and American workers who once manned assembly lines now bag foreign merchandises, or serve up transfat specials with a crooked smile. As wage slaves, we belong to no teams save the ones we see on television. Falling behind on cable bills, we can still cheer for these sweating millionaires, our ideal, hallucinated selves, as they can still compete and be successful more or less half of the time.

Previous generations battled management, police or troops for each concession. Today, we show our defiance by mutilating ourselves and dropping our pants a few inches. Many hurl racist insults at the President or those of the wrong faiths or shades. Most of us simply can’t recognize our true enemies, and the ones who do feel helpless to make these criminals, and their enablers, nearly all of our bobbing head politicians, pay. Fed up with Coke, we elect Pepsi. Pissed off at Pepsi, we switch back to Coke. Since our rulers hold all the cards, they don’t really mind our rising anger, which they can manipulate and steer through the mainstream media. Trawling new depths of absurdity, these mind control apparatuses derange and rob us of any sense of proportion. In this economy, bullshit shines. Breaking news: Obama’s grin found blossoming from Britney’s armpit! Details at eleven!






.

"Sealed Management"

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Speaking of Arizona,

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War Is A Racket

A speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC:


WAR is a racket. It always has been

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

[...]





.

And now for some good news

Johann Hari, The Independent, 8/6/10:


We'll never know the names of all the people who paid with their limbs, their lungs or their lives for the goodies in my home and yours


[...]

The staff work and live in giant factory-cities that they almost never leave. Each room sleeps 10 workers, and each dorm houses 5,000. There are no showers; they are given a sponge to clean themselves with. A typical shift begins at 7.45am and ends at 10.55pm. Workers must report to their stations 15 minutes ahead of schedule for a military-style drill: "Everybody, attention! Face left! Face right!" Once they begin, they are strictly forbidden from talking, listening to music, or going to the lavatory. Anybody who breaks this rule is screamed at and made to clean the lavatories as punishment. Then it's back to the dorm.

It's the human equivalent of battery farming. One worker said: "My job is to put rubber pads on the base of each computer mouse ... This is a mind-numbing job. I am basically repeating the same motion over and over for over 12 hours a day." At a nearby Meitai factory, which made keyboards for Microsoft, a worker said: "We're really livestock and shouldn't be called workers." They are even banned from making their own food, or having sex. They live off the gruel and slop they are required to buy from the canteen, except on Fridays, when they are given a small chicken leg and foot "to symbolise their improving life".

[...]




.

House Slave Syndrome

As published on Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice and Online Journal, 8/6/10:





A recent article declares, “Tired of war, thousands of Iraqis want to go to U.S.” What it fails to mention is who triggered all the bloodshed. Who made conditions in Iraq so intolerable that these people must flee?

You know who. Over and over again, the U.S. has instigated mayhem or carnage overseas, generating thousands if not millions of refugees, many of whom longing to escape, paradoxically, it seems, to the source of their suffering. You beat and humiliate me, so can I move in?

But there is no paradox here, really. Let’s call this phenomenon the House Slave Syndrome. With its vast military, petrodollar racket and control of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the U.S. dominates every single life on earth. It is a truly a full spectrum master. There is not a Panamanian, Nigerian, Georgian or Japanese, etc, whose life goes unmolested by American military or, more importantly, financial decisions. Each U.S. sneeze distorts the entire world. When its attention to your land includes a coup or a preemptive strike, then the plot just gets bloodier (and often oilier). No use hiding. Unless you’re Bin Laden, Uncle Sam can always reach you!

The fact that many Iraqis want to come here means that our way of life is superior to theirs, many Americans will conclude, and what we’re doing over there is entirely justified, if a bit costly on our end, but we’re such good people, we give so much. Ignored is the fact that we’ve sold their oil and gas and kept 96% of the gross receipts. Our occupation is also not called We Will Bomb You, Strip You Naked and Smear Shit On Your Face, but Operation Iraqi Freedom. We’re teaching them about civilization, even if they did start it five thousand years ago. A refresher course can’t hurt. Between waterboarding lessons, we’ll teach them about Angelina Jolie, and, for the more serious and advanced students, Megan Fox and Whoopie Goldberg. We’ll throw in easy to understand parables about Jesus. Turn the other cheek, you Satanist Terrorists!

There is nothing new here. We’ve been messing with Iraq for half a century. In 1963, we orchestrated a coup there. We supported Saddam Hussein even before he became president. Before we turned against him, Saddam was our boy, just like Ngo Dinh Diem, Ferdinand Marco, Mohammad Pahlavi, Manuel Noriega and so many others. It’s good that Uncle Sam is not a baseball executive, because his picks are always terrible, but just ask yourself, What sort of character, for cash or career advancement, collaborates with the C.I.A.?

Washington ditches foreign dictators when they no longer serve its needs, but even the most loyal servants of our ruling class are just disposable tools, if not collateral damages. It has come out that General John D. Lavelle, who died in disgrace 30 years ago, was unjustly blamed for a military decision authorized by Richard Nixon. As his career was destroyed, both White House and Pentagon said nothing. Consider also what happened to Old Blood and Guts. Sixty-three years after the death of General Patton, evidences emerged that he was killed by the O.S.S., precursors to the C.I.A., in a staged car crash.

So even the highest ranked house slaves are not safe. Still, it’s better to be inside than out. It’s best to be as close to the man as possible. Here’s a basic rule of survival: When shots ring out, run to the gang with the biggest guns, the one with the most tanks, planes and ships, and you’ll less likely to become kabob. If they’re smart bombing your neighborhood, you can save your own ass by moving into theirs, for even their least desirable real estate, even Detroit, for example, is safer than Baghdad, if not by much. In short, the closer you are to the baddest mofo, the less likely you are to be zapped by one of his drones or military contractors. If you sit next to the pilot, he’ll have a harder time bombing your ass. Sniffing the man’s deodorant, you will also have better access to his table scraps, preowned clothing and maybe even a bit of hand me down culture.

As long as we engage in wars on foreign soils, refugees will try to come here, but we simply can’t stop because war is our primary industry, what we export to the rest of the world. War is our way of life. We are a war servicing nation. War nourishes our military industrial complex, cheers up stock holders of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Electrics, etc. Without wars, our stock market would disappear. College-aged children of the investment class may hold up cute signs protesting this or that conflict, but daddies and mommies need systematic and routine mass murders to maintain healthy stock portfolios.







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.

Let Them Eat Cake

Paul Craig Roberts, 7/30/10:



[...] Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state, such as the presidents of France and Italy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are among the 500 invited guests along with Barbara Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, and Clinton friend and donor Denise Rich, wife of the Clinton-pardoned felon.

Before we attend to the poor political judgment of such an extravagant affair during times of economic distress, let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.

The American people did not take up a collection to reward him for his service to them.
Where did the money come from? Who was he really serving during his eight years in office?

How did Tony Blair and his wife, Cherrie, end up with an annual income of ten million pounds (approximately $15 million dollars) as soon as he left office? Who was Blair really serving?


[...]




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