A couple of days ago I mentioned the Pentagon’s illegal covert propaganda program instigated for political purposes by the White House:

♦ Bush’s covert propaganda campaign.

A couple days earlier I commented on the fact not a single news source has followed up on ABC News’ unpromoted and forgotten reveal that key figures in the Administration including King George himself new about, discussed in great detail, and authorized methods of torture illegal in the rest of the civilized world (and even for the U.S. in WWII as we convicted Japanese of using these techniques)

♦ King George admit to torture; media yawns.

Now, two great tastes suck together. Daily KOS recently reported on the fact no one in the corporate media is making any to-do or asking questions or following up on the covert propaganda program:

♦ Propaganda War:  The silence is deafening

What’s it mean when the town criers, the townsmen, the Senate, all fiddle while Nero burns Rome?

I am not a fan of the American health care system. I take that back–the health care is fine when insurance companies are not involved. We don’t own the market on advanced care, unlike what jingoist conservatives would have you believe. There are medical facilities in developing nations that have the technology and medical training equal to some of America’s best and better than a lot. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation without socialized health care, where for-profit corporate insurance companies run the industry. We’re the only industrialized nation in which millions of citizens file for bankruptcy every year because they can’t afford the medical bills. Bills which are often ridiculously over-inflated thanks to the broken insurance laws and practices.

So, I’m all for socialized health care, just as I’m all for socialism. But what’s better than socialism is anarcho-socialism: a society without government intervention in which people work cooperatively to care for and service each other. We’ve seen the reports on the pay-as-you-will coffee shops and for-trade-only bookstores and food markets that are sprouting up around the country. Well, it warms my heart when people continue to prove that people don’t need government to do their humane, civic duty:

♦ ‘So many people … fall through the cracks’

It’s a story about a medical clinic that treats uninsured people–basically doing what the government should be doing for its own citizens (so long as we have governments). They operate on a voluntary donation basis, but anyone who can’t pay gets treated–and more personally. Greater care is taken with each patient as opposed to the cattle-through-the-chutes attitude of for-profit corporate owned hospitals and clinics.

Of course, the problem is still money. This clinic and others like it can only stay open so long as people donate money, and so far they’ve been able to receive enough to stay open. One day, in the anarchist collectivist dream, there will be no concept of monetary wealth. Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom believably imagines a post-scarcity world in which there is no money, but instead, respect is used as coinage. The more helpful you are, the more giving, outgoing, outspoken, charitable you are the more respect you accrue as “wuffie” points (thanks to the electronic real-time interconnectedness of people) which allows you to use “better” transportation and apartments and restaurants, etc.

So, this clinic still has to operate within the machinations of capitalism if it’s going to be able to provide care to people who the corporate and institutional hegemony chose to ignore and discard. It’s times like these I wish that (if there can’t be no money and no scarcity of resources) that I were super-rich so I could give millions to initiatives like this.
They deserve it more than anyone.

My final verdict on Ashcroft: this is what Hannah Arendt meant by “the banality of evil.”  He seems like a normal guy (albeit one with some real anger issues), and yet…well, I don’t need to finish that sentence.

This is from a contributor to the Daily KOS blog, referring to a speech given by John Ashcroft at a college where he answered (and dodged) questions regarding his role in the same kinds of torture in which Japanese soldiers were convicted in U.S. tribunals for war crimes against humanity.

♦ John Ashcroft Yelled at Me Tonight. No Joke. (K.O.’S “WORSE PERSON IN THE WORLD”!)

Read as Ashcroft uses every dirty trick in the book to try to avoid admitting his role in torture or even what torture is–despite the documented evidence of it right in front of his.

When will these people be tried for their crimes?

It’s hard not to comment on the horrific screed that is the movie “Expelled”. I’ve not seen it, and I’m not sure I want to (just as I’m not interested in seeing Michael Moore’s manipulative and half-truth pseudo-docs). But Scientific America has a great article listing a few things that the movies gets horribly wrong–and not accidentally!

♦ Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn’t Want You to Know…

For example:

During Scientific American’s post-screening conversation with Expelled associate producer Mark Mathis, we asked him why Ken Miller was not included in the film. Mathis explained that his presence would have “confused” viewers. But the reality is that showing Miller would have invalidated the film’s major premise that evolutionary biologists all reject God.

(Ken Miller is an evolutionary biologist, AND is publicly religious.)

And, they cut and edit Darwin’s writing to make it sound like he’s the father of “social Darwinism” and advocates the eradication of the weak…when he actually wrote the exact opposite!! It’ll make you plotz when you read this.

I’ve been anticipating Cory Doctorow’s latest novel for half a year now, since I first heard of it. It’s a young adult novel in which some innocent kids get picked up by Homeland Security for suspicion of involvement in a terrorist act. After the treatment they receive, the decide it’s time to bring back the Bill of Rights and use home-grown technology to fight the government. The novel is filled with actual tech and counter-tech plans and ideas.

I just listened to an interview with Doctorow on the Adventures in Scifi Publishing podcast:

♦ AISFP 48 - Cory Doctorow

In which they talk about the fascist techniques and outlook of the U.S. and U.K. these days, the new book, and also publishing. It’s interesting to hear how Doctorow supports and defends book publishers as being on the side of the writer and the reader, as opposed to music companies who you would think by the way they treat artists and fans were out to destroy them. Considering how much his book publisher, TOR, supports Doctorow giving away books they sell, for free on his Web site–they must be supportive! Random House has the audiobook rights and are willing to provide it in non-DRMA crippled MP3 format! Book publishers are cool. Anyway, you can listen to all this on the podcast.

Before the interview the hosts discuss Bush’s 2009 budget proposal which would defund the long-running Reading is Fundamental program:

♦ Bush’s ‘09 Budget Eliminates RIF Funding

The hosts, bless their naive hearts, seem shocked by this. They don’t seem to understand that to Milton Friedman worshiping corporate-owned capitalist fascists, a literate and educated populace is the enemy. A strong middle-class, a literate masses, can recognize and understand what’s going on around them, and are able to use the system to “fight the power,” and hinder the neo-con (and not a small number of Democrats) attempt to turn the government into a corporate controlled oligarchy. This is why the Bush administration has been trying hard for seven years to get rid of (or at least control using neo-con loyalist lackies) PBS and NPR, have been sabotaging public education system, promoting abstinence-only programs which are proven to be ineffective, have tried to get rid of the public education mandate of NASA. To these people, the purpose of the populace are to be wage-slaves and spend what little free time they have watching mindless garbage and not thinking, especially not critically and not for themselves. Bush’s attempt to get rid of the program which provides books and promotes literacy among the poor and at-risk kids is just another in his long line of attempts to transorm the American people into mindless peasants.

Was reminded on a talk show today of how McCain, whenever he’s asked why he’s against socialized health care since, as the son of an Admiral and as a Senator, has had socialized government medical care all his life–he deflects the question or simply demonizes Canada’s and Europe’s health care as if Canadian hospitals have dirt floors.

My brother lives in Canada, and I usually distrust all anecdotal evidence, but his experience with socialized Canadian health care has been quite good. Meanwhile, I and people I know who pay for insurance here in the U.S. wait as long or longer for specialists and appointments than most of the selected horror stories the anti-socialized care advocates like to bandy about.

What does this have to do with the cost of lettuce? Because I think if prices for gas and things went up in the U.S. to match European norms, we’re going to be in a heck of a mess if we don’t also treat workers with the same amount of value as they do in western/northern Europe where socialism is a viable and working socio-political mode. In Canada and Europe, the worker often has 4-day work weeks and many times as much as two-months worth of vacation a year. As far as I can tell, gross pay isn’t much different than the U.S.

Now, Canadians and Europeans (who from this point on I’ll call CanEurs) have slightly less take-home than U.S. workers because of taxes. Oh nos! Evil socialism! But here’s the trade-off: I have to pay most of the same amount they do out of my check for taxes and Social Security and insurance–plus a at least the difference and probably a whole lot more in out-of-pocket medical expenses. In CanEur you pay some more in taxes, but never have to go bankrupt, have your credit destroyed, your life turned upside down when it’s already dealing with illness, possibly made homeless, because of medical expenses. Evil, terrible socialist CanEurs!

Also for that extra tax money, the CanEurs by and large have far superior public transit systems, making it often unnecessary to even own a car and pay car loans, high gas prices, and auto insurance (not unnecessary, but a lot more so than it is in the U.S.). They also have a more effective and fluid pension program, and without being trillions of dollars in debt. (In fact, many CanEur countries own some of the U.S.’s debt; China’s not the only one who owns us.)

Most CanEurs countries see corporations as a means for the people to earn money, not like the U.S. in which the laws and poli-economic dynamics see it more like the people only exist to serve the corporations and make it profit. (As Marx said, “Profit is unpaid labor.”)

The way our American labor and business ethic is, the more those in power continue to unfairly flow wealth up toward the top (the U.S., “the richest country in the world,” has the highest gulf between the wealthiest and poorest citizens. The top 1% of Americans have the same amount of wealth as the entire rest of the 99%. The U.S. has the highest rate of infant death than any other modern industrialized nation, the greatest number of homeless, and the highest percentage of poverty–how’s that capitalist “by your own bootstraps or bust” ideology working out?), as long as we continue like this, these higher prices are going to crush the middle class. For the 6th straight year capital gains have increased while the number of people falling below the poverty line has increased. This means corporate profit has increased while those working to make the obscene CEO compensation packages are earning less and less.

McCain’s solution? We should all start thinking about working two jobs. (Clinton’s probably not much better, and I have no idea about Obama.) More and more Americans ARE working more than one job. Don’t know if it’s related, but divorce rates are climbing. And how’s those Republican “family values” getting appreciated when family members hardly see each other as they’re working stagnant or decreasing wages to pay for their gas and daycare and lettuce?

Evil, terrible socialists with their higher literacy rates, shorter work weeks, not having to worry about medical care and costs, and generally happier, more fulfilled citizens. How can they live with such terrible conditions.

Interesting article from someone reporting on the high cost of lettuce tipping their realization scale:

♦ iReport: Realization of rise in food prices.

The comments are interesting. There’s a good chance that American gas and consumable prices are simply climbing to world market standard prices, as seen in Canada and Europe. And they may end up staying there.

As a country, we really are gluttonous. Maybe we need this price hike to stop the gross conspicuous consumption. This may very well help us “grow up” as a nation and become more responsible as individuals, and a nation in the world at large.

But I still don’t like it. The price of everything EXCEPT healthy, natural foods should go up. We might become a more responsible and frugal nation, but we’ll still be obese and chronically unhealthy as Hamburger Helper remains cheaper and more economical than a head of lettuce.

Taking another play out of the Goebbels’s playbook, the White House has been covertly sending in “political analysts” to the news shows promoting the war…who are either being paid by the Pentagon or have close financial ties to military contracts, as reported by the NY Times:

♦ Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

(Side note: this just adds even more skepticism on the whole 9-11 was an inside job conspiracy nonesense. Here’s a tiny conspiracy involving a couple dozen people, including former old guard military with very entrenched ideas of loyalty to the Commander-in-Chief, and some of them are coming forward to admit their role in this conspiracy.

9-11, if an inside job, would have required the participation of hundreds of military, government, and civilian persons working in perfect concert to pull it off. And not a single person has come forward to say “I was involved in the 9-11 attack and cover-up”?! These guys are coming clean due to conscience; if 9-11 was a Bush conspiracy, not a single person with a conscience would come forward out of hundreds? Or, even for the fame and glory that would be shined upon them for having made public this plot of the highest possible importance? Yeah, right.)

Distracting tangent aside, this covert Pentagon propaganda campaign is federally criminal. Yet something else for Congress to not bother investigating. It still kills me: Clinton was impeached for lying about consensual sex. The mountains of high crimes and misdemeanors around Bush and Party are as high as the Washington Monument–and they’re going to get completely away with it.

Disgusting. Maybe the cynics are right: “We get the president we deserve.”

An absolutely hilarious posting on BoingBoing this weekend:

♦ Shakespeare’s Pulp Fiction

Be sure to follow the link to the source site to see an even better sample of Pulp Fiction as written by Shakespeare. I was literally in pain from giggling reading it.

Christopher Hitchens has a question he asks people who think morality comes from a divine source:

If you say that morality can only be derived from a supernatural authority/dictatorship, then you must be able to name for me an ethical statement made or ethical action performed by a believer that could not have been performed by a nonbeliever, by an infidel, that would be forbidden to them, unavailable, unaccessible. Can you do it? They haven’t yet. The challenge has been out for quite a long time.
—————————-

Whereas if I can just mention my corollary, if I ask any audience member, not just this one, any audience — I did it in Georgetown University, one of the headquarters of the Catholic faith in this country, night before last — can they think of a wicked action performed that could only have been performed in the name of God or other divine instruction? No one has any hesitation in recognizing or identifying an example. Now as long as this remains the case, it is they who have to do the explaining, they who owe the accounting, they who owe the apology and not us, and we must be plain on it.

Can you answer these questions?

It’s really sad, and in a way is reflective of how my life has been going.

I used to be a voracious reader. I was introduced to the works of Poe, Bradbury, and Lovecraft around the 3rd grade. I was hooked on scifi and horror ever since.

In jr. and high school I read a novel just about every other day. As an undergrad, it slowed because I actually had school work and theatre to do, but I still constantly read for pleasure. Then, nearly as soon as I graduated and I entered the work-a-day world, that came to a sudden stop. I might have read maybe maybe two fiction novels a year. From no less than one a week to one a year is an astronomical change. And my life was kind of in auto-pilot.

I suppose it’s more complex than that, to be honest. I blame the Internet. It was about that time that we (the wife and I) got hooked on Internet chatting, Web browsing, Minesweeper (well, for her. For me it was the latest 1st-person shooter game). As I think about this now that I type (which is often the case–I rarely think about things before I spew the results) it wasn’t an entirely bad thing. The Internet chatting ended up leading toward socializing in real life with more people as well (something which also stopped after I graduated). And socializing is good! For my fiction, there’s a little bit to be had in some computer games, superficially.

Well, then came a couple of years ago. (Too bad I never edit my spewing. I don’t want to reread that last sentence, but I know it was atrocious!) Things started moving and shaking. I came to certain “spiritual” realities which “fit” with what and who I am like a tailored glove. Where before, for years, I was an existential wreck, constantly worrying about the Nature of God and sin and afterlife and trying to make sense of revealed “Truths” of religion with the revealed truths of all other religions–and eventually found what I believe is to be truth that makes complete and utter, perfect sense! And that realization (revelation? *eg*) made it feel like I had a bunch of jumbled pieces inside me that had been rattling around and grinding on each other for years, and then they all suddenly clicked snuggly in place. And I felt internally whole and alive and awake. (To borrow a phrase, but it works.)

Then I realized that I needed to get my education and career back on track. Got into grad school, and immediately, in that first semester, came upon some socio-political concepts that were troubling and weird and disturbing–much like the concepts which lead me to “religious understanding,” It took me a while to play with them and research them and start to understand them, but they eventually brought me to understanding certain socio-political “truths” that I’ve come to embrace as “right.” (The religious understandings took me about…seventeen years to come to where I am, and once the click happened, I knew it was right. These socio-political beliefs are more slippery. There’s a LOT more room for subjectivity and opinion–after all, religious “truths” are or they aren’t. Socio-political “truths” are human-created ideas and so can have all kinds of spectrum of right/wrong, works/fails, etc. I know I will always be a secular-humanist because there’s objective truth in it, but I may not always be an anarcho-socialist as I am now. And even what that means is subject to change.)

And then I also learned in the process what my career goals are right for me. It used to be amorphous and uncertain, based first on just continuing my undergrad studies (which granted, I was interested in! But I kind of fell into it based on what department was willing to give me the most funding). Then I went into grad school this last time with a plan closer to what I felt I wanted–which it was and I did. Literary studies. But then I learned that it was indeed possible to focus on scifi/fantasy (speculative fiction) as a subject, and I gained a HUGE interest in cultural studies that I had no idea that I had a passion for before.

My daughter is now at that wonderful age where she’s bright and creative and full of hope and joy, and not yet hating her parents and hanging out with “wrong” people and doing things to rebel. The wifey-poo and I doing well and unless I decide I have to get my doctorate in Canada (which is increasingly likely), we’ll only get better. So, things are good right now.

Which means I’m reading again! Actually, I have no idea how the two topics relate. That’s the problem with stream-of-consciousness writing. I’m reading more again because of grad school, I would say, except even last year I didn’t read as much for pleasure. Sure, I read non-fiction here and there, and a TON for class work, but I still didn’t read novels except for class. This year: so far in about six weeks, I’ve read:

Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe
Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War
Steven Brust’s My Own Kind of Freedom
halfway through Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End
started David Marusek’s Counting Heads
read some stories out of Rewired

I suppose I’m being a little disingenuous–I’m reading/have read most of the above partly for research on my work in posthumanism–but sort of. If I wanted to, I could skim them, find what I need, read others’ research on them. But I actually primarily read for pleasure, and I’ve missed doing so. I’m also reading again because I’m writing fiction again–something I haven’t done in quite some time. And to be able write colorfully and interestingly, one needs to be reading, especially various genre and styles. And already I can tell getting back into the world of playing with words is improving my own work.

Ah, speaking of Brust’s “Firefly” novel: Remember back in my post Thoughts on this year’s ICFA where I discuss my trepidation about fanfic and fiction written in a pre-existing world developed and made “living” by actors? Well, Brust’s My Own Kind of Freedom continues the method of pulling direct quotes and actions from the show/film to create archtype representations of the characters. Except in, I believe it was chapter 11. Brust suddenly has a burst (heh) of inspiration, and his characters came alive for most of a chapter, without the need of copy-and-pasted lines and actions. Captain Mal was Mal, his dialog fit the character created by Joss Whedon and Nathon Filion without being a copy of the character. It suddenly became like I was watching (reading) a lost episode as opposed to someone trying to create an episode out of bits and pieces. I got excited reading that chapter: “Yes! Here we go. Now we’re cookin’!”

Sadly, the inspiration left, and the rest of the novel lapsed back into auto-pilot. Interesting plot, but utterly 2-dimensional characters.

Which is sad, for me, because one of the reasons Brust is one of my all-time favorite authors is because of his characters. In the early Vlad Taltos books, I completely believed Vlad. When he left his love (or she left him…can’t remember now which), I literally cried. When in book six he switched from 1st-person narration to 3rd and focused on a different set of characters, I literally threw the book across the room because I was so involved with the characters he’d created in 1 through 5, getting rid of them felt the same as their dying. So, it kind of saddens me.

Well, this post was an explosion of pointless drivel. I’m sorry for you having read it. Please email me and I will see if I have some “few minutes out of my life” I can try to give back to you. No promises, however.

I was having an imaginary conversation with myself yesterday, debating the question of why not allow people to have their misguided pseudo-scientific beliefs. I was thinking about it in context of things like ghost-whispering psychics, and wheat grass juice, and Airborne supplements, etc. Things which seem harmless enough (except for Airborne. You risk vitamin E poisoning if you take the recommended dose).

And I came to a similar, although less dreadful conclusion as today’s Cectic comic:

This is one very real consequence of unfounded belief in falsehoods.

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