The Chemical Edge

This little piggy went to market,

This little piggy stayed at home,

This little piggy had roast beef,

This little piggy had none...

And this little piggy is an example

of what chemical and toxic pollution

is doing to biological life forms,

meaning us, the cause of it all,

we are the little guinea piggies,

and we will be the ones that go...

"Wee wee wee" all the way home.


(read more)

Prison Planet

The United States has 4.6% of the worlds population and nearly 25% of the worlds prisoners......what's wrong with this picture?

In 1983 Corrections Corporation of America founded the private corrections industry. Despite having been outlawed nationally for over a century, private prisons have been turned into a money making proposition. Traded daily on the stock exchange, the profit for prisoners business is growing by leaps and bounds, incarceration rates have soared. Should this be a for-profit business?


The continued prohibition of legalized marijuana provides a convenient source of fodder for the prison-industrial complex. An American is arrested for pot every 38 seconds. Since 1965, more than 20 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana offenses, 90 percent of them for simple possession.

Keith Stroup, Executive Director of NORML said "In fact, the war on drugs is largely a war on pot smokers. This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that should be dedicated toward combating serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."


And despite baby boomers being in charge in recent years, annual pot busts have tripled since the non-inhaling Bill Clinton took office. The total number of marijuana arrests far exceeds the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

It isn’t only marijuana consumers who want to see weed legalized. (None other than William F. Buckley was for it.) Ending prohibition is also a popular cause for at least 10,000 cops, narcs, judges, and others who make up the membership of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.


From LEAP’s down-and-dirty perspective, prohibition exacerbates rather than ameliorates America’s drug problem. Prohibition not only diverts resources from the pursuit of more-serious crimes, it empowers criminals and enhances black-market incentives. Money spent fighting what adults seem to want could be better allocated toward education and rehab.

It is well known that alcohol and tobacco related health effects and deaths by far eclipse any detrimental effects of occasional recreational marijuana use by adults. Common sense would tell you that, if anything, alcohol and tobacco should be prohibited and marijuana should be legalized.


The benifits of legalizing pot would be a double-triple-whammy in that it could create a substantial amount of wealth for farmers and industry, increase revenue through the regulation and taxation of hemp and marijuana sales, it would free up much needed police and judicial resources, put a significant dent in the income of criminal black-market forces, it would keep non-violent consumers out of jail, and create a sustainable resource that could replace many of the items now made of plastic.

The Marijuana Policy Project advocates taxing and regulating the possession and sale of cannabis, arguing that a regulated industry would separate purchasers from the street market for cocaine, heroin, and other hard drugs. You can't legislate morality, adults should be allowed the freedom to pursue their ideal of happiness as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Legalizing marijuana would be a fabulous way to "Go Green!" There's no reason we shouldn't legalize pot, it's just a plant.

(excerpts from Kathleen Parker and skeptically.org)

Abandon All Hope

There is a supermassive black hole

at the center of nearly every galaxy...

...you haven't got a chance

Whale story

Notes from Big Sur,

October 14, 2007

I’m sitting in the hot springs, having another late night discussion with Gregg, a psychiatrist from Ann Arbor (U of M). He’s doing research for a book he’s writing that claims that we humans are not the most intelligent species on earth. At best, we come in a distant third .. whales and dolphins are much smarter. In fact, he says jokingly, whales evolved wireless Internet millions of years before Al Gore .. they communicate with each other by sending ‘sonar messages’ that can be heard by other whales in any ocean on the planet. Back at the cabin, he shows me 8 by 10 glossy photos of a whale’s brain. Pretty impressive I say (once he explains what I’m looking at). They have a much larger, and more convoluted, cerebral cortex than we do. I ask him if that’s because they have much more body area to control. He says no, very little of it is ‘motor cortex’ .. those functions were distributed to areas outside the whale’s brain a long long time ago. Now humans, he believes, operate from a much lower part of the brain .. what’s known as the ‘reptilian brain’ .. and that’s what drives our’ rational brain’ .. not the other way around .. as we would like to think. He goes on to tell me that these lower brain areas assign ‘addresses’ that link ‘powerful emotions’ to information entering memory. That’s why we remember what other people tell us much better than what we read in books. I sit fascinated by all of this. Afterwards, he gives me a book called ‘Up from Dragons’ by Dorion Sagan, the son of the late Carl Sagan. I remember reading ‘Dragons of Eden’ in college and was fascinated then too. Gregg has been one of the most interesting parts of this trip. I tell him so the next morning, and we hug before he disappears down highway one. I must remember to send him a copy of “Defending the Cavewoman” when I get home.

Seasonal Vertigo

Hemispheric change would be gentle
An opposition of what used to be
Winter is summer and fall is spring
Sounds perfectly logical to me!

Nightmare Before Christmas style
Mixed up jumble of holiday cheer
Halloween is Easter, Christmas for St. Pat’s
Still keeping the imagery clear!

Much harder to process, in my mind
The seasonal vertigo of paradise
Rainforest greenery and sunshiney days
No turning leaves, nor snow, nor one shred of ice!

We live in Never Never Land
What day is this? What time of year?
How old am I? Has time gone by?
Total eradication of doomsday fear.

Earth Creatures

We were here

before you were

To the moon

Overhead, crows are shouting ..and drowning out the music on my deck. I look up and see them clustered in the trees and scenes from the Hitchcock movie ‘The Birds’ flash by and I feel a twinge of ‘can that happen here’. Something tells me no so I howl back at them. There’s a momentary pause as they lift off .. cluster in another group of trees ..and crank up the volume. Crows are not my bird of choice to take with me if I ever had to live on a deserted island. I start reading an article in the news about future space colonies on the moon ..and mistake the term ‘reconnaissance orbiter’ for ‘renaissance orbiter’. For some reason, I think the word renaissance is more fitting. Then a movie scene from early-childhood comes to mind (from before we walked on the moon) .. where one of the astronauts goes crazy ..breaks away from the pack ..crosses over to the ‘sunny side’ and immediately disintegrates and turns into a skeleton. I cringe when I think about packing the kids and the dog and moving there. Now I'm worried that everything I know comes from either the movies or television shows.

V for Vendetta

Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici

By the power of truth I

while living

have conquered the universe

God Is In The Rain

Stellar dialogue

Have you seen the stars tonight ..they remind me that we live on a lunar colony ..and not the oppressed state of some god forsaken planet. The colonies are not safe from tyranny either, I remind her .. the ones on Saturn were once free-states. I know, she says ..that’s why I like it here ..hydroponic gardens and you can practice revelry without persecution ..you know, I don’t even miss home that much. Where’s home ? In the Euripides. Oh yeah, I see what you mean ..I remember the witch hunts of November, 2023 .. are you ever afraid of something like that happening here ? All the time, she says. If it does ..I think I’ll stowaway on a starship to Europa ..I hear they’re much more civilized there ..it’s an incubator of free ideas ..and the mother of all creatures ..they live in the lapis lazuli realm, you know ..not just the temporary worlds of hungry ghosts and empire builders ..the waters of life have been flowing freely on Europa ..since the beginning ..and I think they will keep on flowing free thru eternity.

Boys Town

Lest we forget the pedophiles

that inhabit Washington D.C.

Attempting to give a damn

A Love Story

Watch this movie

Join The Crowd

Your world is confusing

and imploding around you

you want to do something

but you don't know what

I know you feel lost

join the crowd

Wall Street Mafia

(excerpt from The New York Times)

By JULIE CRESWELL
Published: October 4, 2009

"For most of the 133 years since its founding in a small city in Wisconsin, the Simmons Bedding Company enjoyed an illustrious history.

Its recent history has been notable, too, but for a different reason.

Simmons says it will soon file for bankruptcy protection, as part of an agreement by its current owners to sell the company — the seventh time it has been sold in a little more than two decades — all after being owned for short periods by a parade of different investment groups, known as private equity firms, which try to buy undervalued companies, mostly with borrowed money.

For many of the company’s investors, the sale will be a disaster. Its bondholders alone stand to lose more than $575 million. The company’s downfall has also devastated employees like Noble Rogers, who worked for 22 years at Simmons, most of that time at a factory outside Atlanta. He is one of 1,000 employees — more than one-quarter of the work force — laid off last year.

But Thomas H. Lee Partners of Boston has not only escaped unscathed, it has made a profit. The investment firm, which bought Simmons in 2003, has pocketed around $77 million in profit, even as the company’s fortunes have declined. THL collected hundreds of millions of dollars from the company in the form of special dividends. It also paid itself millions more in fees, first for buying the company, then for helping run it. Last year, the firm even gave itself a small raise.

Wall Street investment banks also cashed in. They collected millions for helping to arrange the takeovers and for selling the bonds that made those deals possible. All told, the various private equity owners have made around $750 million in profits from Simmons over the years.

How so many people could make so much money on a company that has been driven into bankruptcy is a tale of these financial times and an example of a growing phenomenon in corporate America.

Every step along the way, the buyers put Simmons deeper into debt. The financiers borrowed more and more money to pay ever higher prices for the company, enabling each previous owner to cash out profitably.

But the load weighed down an otherwise healthy company. Today, Simmons owes $1.3 billion, compared with just $164 million in 1991, when it began to become a Wall Street version of “Flip This House.”

In many ways, what private equity firms did at Simmons, and scores of other companies like it, mimicked the subprime mortgage boom. Fueled by easy money, not only from banks but also endowments and pension funds, buyout kings like THL upended the old order on Wall Street. It was, they said, the Golden Age of private equity — nothing less than a new era of capitalism." (read more The New York Times)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now you see? The Mafia didn't go extinct, they just went "legit" and moved to Wall Street where robbery and greed have been made legal.

US COMMON MAN MANIPULATED LIKE CATTLE

The Obama Manipulation

Posted: Oct 11, 2009 Sun 07:34 pm

by M. ASADI


"The Obama manipulation: the rebelling masses, rebelling against the US system were pacified using symbolism of inclusion and real change in the person of Obama in the 2008 presidential elections. Obama's preplanned failure given the enormity of the crisis faced is supposed to deflect that rebelliousness against the system towards the direction of racial failure on the part of African Americans, fermenting the racial divide while at the same time preserving the status quo of the US permanent war economy. A very ingenious way of solving this systemic crisis by the U.S. elite, using the U.S. public as cattle prodded through the "vote" and slogans of "change" back towards their slaughter line-up where their personalities and identities are slaughtered by the corporations on a regular basis.

Read my article, The Barack Conspiracy, written before the Nov 2008 Presidential Elections, and see how each of its predictions are coming to pass."

Darkness

Alone in the darkness

we languish in our fear,

it is only in the light

that we can see the truth

Society of Love

Call me crazy. but I believe that no person should have to suffer.

And if any person shall suffer, let it be regarding his own choice.

Ignorance turns this world into a miserable place,

but we can resolve to love.

We should come together,

divisions kill and alienate.

No matter what the world says,

The Society of Love will take you in,

and show you the way to live.

No matter the general consensus,

those with the arcane knowledge of a life lived in love,

will be the ones to change the world for the better.

The Society of Love

is one to be reached for

For the Sake of Humanity

philosopher king

All You Need To Know

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"

that is all Ye know on earth,

and all ye need to know.

...John Keats...

Nobel Peace Prize Winner

President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize today to the surprise of many. The award was a first in that Barack Obama is the first American president to win the award in his first year in office. Some noted that it was not so much because of his accomplishments up to date, but that it reflected an important change in the willingness to dialogue, a virtual slap in the face to "W", his predecessor. Any way you look at it, heartfelt congratulations Mr. President!

Hope for Peace

International perspective allows that
just the removal of Military-Industrial
cheerleaders from office, a huge step
to recognizing what President Eisenhower warned
about appearing to look criminal by bullying.

When Senator Obama demonstrated how well
Senator Clinton could dialog when debate was expected,
he was much more subtle a peacemaker
than many will ever appreciate.

The End Of Childhood

The childhood of mankind

has come to an end

it is time to tell the truth

They have always been here

Shortly after midday on 16 January 1958, a series of photographs were taken from a ship anchored off Trindade Island, about 650 miles from the coast of Brazil.


The photographer, a Brazilian named Almiro Barauna, claimed to have seen a dark grey object approach the island, fly behind a mountain peak and then turn around and head back the way it came, disappearing at high speed over the horizon.


The object glittered and was surrounded by a green mist, and it displayed an undulating motion, changing to a tilted position as it passed over the island. On board the ship with Barauna were some 300 other crew, and around 50 of them are claimed to have seen the object.

April 11, 2008

Harvest Of Fear

For centuries—millennia—farmers have saved seeds from season to season: they planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, then reclaimed and cleaned the seeds over the winter for re-planting the next spring. Monsanto has turned this ancient practice on its head.

Monsanto developed G.M. seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. Monsanto then patented the seeds. For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented. "It’s not like describing a widget," says Joseph Mendelson III, the legal director of the Center for Food Safety, which has tracked Monsanto’s activities in rural America for years.

Indeed not. But in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, turned seeds into widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply. In its decision, the court extended patent law to cover "a live human-made microorganism." In this case, the organism wasn’t even a seed. Rather, it was a Pseudomonas bacterium developed by a General Electric scientist to clean up oil spills. But the precedent was set, and Monsanto took advantage of it. Since the 1980s, Monsanto has become the world leader in genetic modification of seeds and has won 674 biotechnology patents, more than any other company, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

(excerpts from Vanity Fair - read more)

(americanbuilt.us)

ART ?

I've been wondering lately about what exactly, or generally, to consider the definition of "ART".

I am leaving the question open and collecting opinions, including my own, in an effort to coagulate thought and suggestion into a workable definition.

Oddly enough,since I have begun thinking about this, I have noticed references to this question in the media that I am usually exposed to. Pops up in newspaper, magazine, and even cartoon jottings. It's uncanny but probably just that I am noticing these coincidences when I normally wouldn't see them.
But to consider presentations of painting, metalwork, photography, mixed media,sculpture,printmaking, wood, ceramics, fiber, digital renderings, and glass; not to mention music, theater, dance, and building construction -- we must consider the possibility for each to be an exhibit of artistic value either to us alone or to us all in general.

The above art by Camille Rose Garcia from Subterranean Death Clash series ,2006

Let it roll around in your head for awhile and please let me know anything that collects in the corners,

Theocratic Myopia

"This was a portrait of the Republican Party fully in the grip of its right wing: almost exclusively white, overwhelmingly evangelical, fixated on abortion, homosexuality, and abstinence education; resentful and angry; and unable to discuss how and why it had become this way. Noticeably absent from the convention were moderate Republicans. Senator Lincoln Chafee, legatee of the moderate Republican tradition in Rhode Island, was defeated in the 2006 midterms, and he was endorsing Obama. The last Republican House member from New England, Representative Chris Shays of Connecticut, would lose his seat in two months. None of the great Republican families of the past, from the Rockefellers to the Eisenhowers, were there either. Both of Ronald Reagan's natural children, Ron and Patti, endorsed Obama. President Dwight Eisenhower's granddaughter, Susan, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Denver just moments before Barack Obama appeared to accept his party's nomination. How did a party once known for its "big tent" philosophy become a one-ring circus? How did a Republican Party that had dominated American politics for over twenty-five years become so marginalized?" (read more)

Maybe we should start over

American Private Police Force

Private armies

Hired by private corporations

Let the healing begin

(read more)

The Voice of Reason

Kill the Monster

Unbridled capitalism

is a money machine

that will eat you alive,

kill the monster.

http://www.americanhealthcarereform.org/